[Beowulf] power usage, Intel 5160 vs. AMD 2216

[Joe Landman]

Mike Davis wrote:
> That's excellent information. I was surpised by how close to the 
> documented power use my number were. Knowing that even high disk use 
> adds little power usage is important to though of us fighting the 
> power/cooling wars.

Memory dimms are a major consumer.  If you have the choice to make 
between smaller cheaper DIMMs using more slots, versus fewer larger (and 
more costly) DIMMs using fewer slots, the latter will usually consume 
less power.  8 GB can be 8x1GB dimms, 4x2GB dimms (or 2x 4GB dimms, 
though this is still not cost competitive even factoring in the power).

The 2GB dimms emit the same heat as the 1 GB dimms.  So if you have a 
1000 node cluster, and you use the larger (slightly more expensive) 2GB 
dimms vs the 1GB dimms, you will emit somewhat less heat.  I haven't 
done the analysis, but I bet it would be close to a good tradeoff for TCO.

That and few parts means lower absolute number of failures, but that is 
another issue.


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Joseph Landman, Ph.D
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