[Beowulf] recommendations for cluster upgrades

[richard.walsh at comcast.net]

>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Mark Hahn" <hahn at mcmaster.ca> 
>To: "richard walsh" <richard.walsh at comcast.net> 
>Cc: "Beowulf Mailing List" <beowulf at beowulf.org> 
>Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 12:35:47 AM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central 
>Subject: Re: [Beowulf] recommendations for cluster upgrades 
> 
>> on-chip Power Control Unit that actively manages idle and active power 
>> consumption is a dramatic leap forward for Intel in this space, 
> 
>i7's memory improvements are pretty clear, but I haven't seen 
>reviews that show too much benefit/advantage in power management ... 



Yes, more work needs to be done to determine the quality and quantity 
of benefit.  I do think increasing the number of core power states (including 
a complete power off state),  offering core-independent power management, 
and the ability to up-clock some cores while downing others allows for 
much finer dynamic control of power use.  This is of course being done at 
45 nm too.  It's early and the implied benefits on systems that are running 
flat-out most or all of the time, which is the objective the objective of HPC 
workload managers may be limited.  Better benchmarks are needed as 
well. 


The two lines that you extracted from my message imply that I think the 
PCU by itself is a "dramatic leap forward for Intel."  This was not my  
intent.  Nehalem in total is however ... even if it largely adopts the design 
standards AMD introduced 3 or 4 years ago. 


Regards, 


rbw
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