[Beowulf] Building new cluster - estimate

[Nifty niftyompi Mitch]

On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 09:58:38PM -0400, Ivan Oleynik wrote:
> Sender: beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org
> 
>    Joshua,
>    Thanks for your response.
> 
>      I may be wrong but Barcelona at 2.3GHz is being offered at the same
>      price as
>      Harpertown at 2.8GHz.
> 
>    Yes, both opteron 2356 and Xeon E5440 are comparable in pricing (~
>    $700), but it is 0.5 GHz difference!
>    I am going to run some tests, but our previous experience with 2.0GHz
>    Barcelona was not very encouraging.

Run some memory bandwidth and cache interaction tests.
A 0.5Ghz clock advantage with a slow memory interface may 
be a net loss.   

It no longer is 'sane' to count clocks per instruction or chart pipeline
interactions by hand on paper so yes test with as many codes you 
you have handy (and as many compilers).


-- 
	T o m  M i t c h e l l 
	Looking for a place to hang my hat.