[Beowulf] Adding 1 point

Vincent Diepeveen diep at xs4all.nl
Thu Jan 12 08:58:32 PST 2012


What really made small clusters at home less attractive,
there is another reason i should add :

That's the rise of cheap multi socket machines.

A 2 socket machine is not so expensive anymore nowadays.
So if you want faster than 1 socket, you buy a 2 socket machine.

If you want faster than that , 4 sockets is there.

That choice wasn't there before end 90s easily available. And in the  
21th century it has become cheap.

Another delaying factor is the rise of so many cores per node. AMD  
and intel sell cpu's for their 4 socket line
that has up to double the amount of nodes than you can have in a  
single socket box.

So it's equivalent nearly to 8 nodes, be it low clocked.

For that reason clusters tend to get more effective at a dozen nodes  
or more, assuming cheap single socket nodes.





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