Recommendation for an 8 core system
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My client would like me to recommend a system that has 8 cores, which I guess would be configured as two processors with quad cores. So I ask the experts here. Why, you may ask? Because we're running very computational intensive analysis on some switch network topologies used in communication satellites. So the quality of your next TV show or Internet connection might depend on the analysis we're performing! mac
Marc Clifton wrote:
Why, you may ask? Because we're running very computational intensive analysis on some switch network topologies used in communication satellites.
Two words: CUDA, 280 however... SuperMicro X7DA8xx series are our current series at work. We buy top of the line XEON's with fancy coolers, and chassies that suck up small animals when they pass by. with an oct core you can pull about 800Gflop. With dual nv280's and some learnin' you can pull up to 2Tflop. 1 Tflop without pulling some magic. Combine the two and you have 1.8Tflop of computational power. :) mmmmmm makes me want to drool.... I have single quad+ dual 280 at home. :-D
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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Jim Crafton wrote:
But I'm not sure if that's really what you're looking for, or you want something like a rack based system.
Desktop would be preferable. This isn't really for a server, rather a high powered number crunching workstation. Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
Desktop would be preferable. This isn't really for a server, rather a high powered number crunching workstation.
Did you consider Tesla[^] or reject it for the difficulties of programming?
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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Jim Crafton wrote:
OK, well then IMHO the Mac Pro is a good option,
Hmmm, well, I'm concerned that there might be issues running Windows-based software that will be beyond the abilities of the client. He's a rocket scientist, not an IT person. :-D Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
He's a rocket scientist
Good luck! :-D :-D :-D welcome to the biz!!
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
So your client is telling you what to recommend?
No, I need to tell my client what I (and the folks here) recommend. Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
No, I need to tell my client what I (and the folks here) recommend.
I tend to go off needs rather than desires, though we always need the highest of everything, so that pretty well covers it. I do have a question for you though.... Will there be high band memory access/transfer in the computation? In other words is this strictly numerical crunching or is it memory intensive as well? This will probably affect your choices, since many DP boards have low-band memory throughput. They are usually designed for I/O to the outside world or number crunching, not for swapping memory around. Though the memory is always interleaved and easily partitioned for multiple user access. I checked and two of our last three purchases were X7DA8+ and X7DB8+, the third I can't access. :) Any of your supermicro's check the bios, and flash right away if you have a newer processor than what the bios supports.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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My client would like me to recommend a system that has 8 cores, which I guess would be configured as two processors with quad cores. So I ask the experts here. Why, you may ask? Because we're running very computational intensive analysis on some switch network topologies used in communication satellites. So the quality of your next TV show or Internet connection might depend on the analysis we're performing! mac
Intel D5400XS mobo supports 2 * Core2 Quad or Xeon CPUs. This gives you 8 way with up to 16GB of RAM on board. Not exactly budget but certainly not Cray pricing either. Here's a froogle listing: http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=intel+D5400XS&btnG=Search+Products&cid=13348298363898583723#ps-sellers[^] HTH - and let us know how it runs!
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Marc Clifton wrote:
Why, you may ask? Because we're running very computational intensive analysis on some switch network topologies used in communication satellites.
Two words: CUDA, 280 however... SuperMicro X7DA8xx series are our current series at work. We buy top of the line XEON's with fancy coolers, and chassies that suck up small animals when they pass by. with an oct core you can pull about 800Gflop. With dual nv280's and some learnin' you can pull up to 2Tflop. 1 Tflop without pulling some magic. Combine the two and you have 1.8Tflop of computational power. :) mmmmmm makes me want to drool.... I have single quad+ dual 280 at home. :-D
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
El Corazon wrote:
mmmmmm makes me want to drool....
Careful, liquids do bad things to powered cots electronics.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Dual quadcores you say - how about something based around an Intel SkullTrail? edit: now how would this cause confusion? "dual" means "composed of 2 parts" as we all know. 2 * 4 = 8. It's not like I'm saying "core2 duo quad" or something nonsensical like that.
harold aptroot wrote:
Dual quadcores
I think I hear banjoes.
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harold aptroot wrote:
Dual quadcores
I think I hear banjoes.
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harold aptroot wrote:
Dual quadcores
I think I hear banjoes.
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El Corazon wrote:
mmmmmm makes me want to drool....
Careful, liquids do bad things to powered cots electronics.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
Q: "Do you smoke?" A: "only computers. only computers."
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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I've heard good things about BOXX machines. Lots of options - their APEX machines go up to 32 cores, I think. Haven't tried 'em myself though, but worth a look. Check 'em out here[^] Cheers, Drew.
Drew Stainton wrote:
I've heard good things about BOXX machines.
Awesome! And thanks--you're the first person (though others followed, to give them credit, hehe) to actually provide me with a link to an actual workstation I can point my client to. Marc
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Drew Stainton wrote:
I've heard good things about BOXX machines.
Awesome! And thanks--you're the first person (though others followed, to give them credit, hehe) to actually provide me with a link to an actual workstation I can point my client to. Marc
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see "Dueling Banjos" is an instrumental composition that was made famous in a scene from the 1972 movie Deliverance. [^] and this.[^]
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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My client would like me to recommend a system that has 8 cores, which I guess would be configured as two processors with quad cores. So I ask the experts here. Why, you may ask? Because we're running very computational intensive analysis on some switch network topologies used in communication satellites. So the quality of your next TV show or Internet connection might depend on the analysis we're performing! mac
This motherboard[^] has four 940 sockets and supports up to 32GB of memory. It takes the 800 series processors.[^] It's a bit on the expensive side. :)
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Q: "Do you smoke?" A: "only computers. only computers."
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb) John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
You need to diversify your habits there's great joy to be had in smoking electronics and mechanical systems of any sort. The most expensive hardware I've smoked is an AC compressor in my old car I was quoted $700ish to replace. Fortunately it was late summer/early fall and I was able to wait a few weeks and have my dad fix it for cost.
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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see "Dueling Banjos" is an instrumental composition that was made famous in a scene from the 1972 movie Deliverance. [^] and this.[^]
Today's lesson is brought to you by the word "niggardly". Remember kids, don't attribute to racism what can be explained by Scandinavian language roots. -- Robert Royall
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Cool, will that improve the content? :-D
Visit http://www.notreadytogiveup.com/[^] and do something special today.
It'll be faster crap.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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My client would like me to recommend a system that has 8 cores, which I guess would be configured as two processors with quad cores. So I ask the experts here. Why, you may ask? Because we're running very computational intensive analysis on some switch network topologies used in communication satellites. So the quality of your next TV show or Internet connection might depend on the analysis we're performing! mac
I can't recommend a pre-built system as I built my own 8-core box, but maybe I can help. For a new computer dedicated to "computational intensive analysis", you now have two options: CPU and GPU. CPU: I bought 2 E5420s because they cost $700 for two, whereas the cheapest of the new 1600MHz FSB ones cost $1000 each. See Intel Xeon 5000 series datasheet[^]. I didn't think that three times the cost was worth it for about a 10% increase in performance. GPU: I have a single NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT which cost about $200 and has 64 cores. I ported my PetriDish[^] article to CUDA[^] and immediately saw the equivalent of 16 CPU cores. It really wasn't that hard except you have to use VS2005. That was my first try at CUDA too, so I'm sure someone who knows what they're doing could get better results. So, for a one off purchase, I'd say it's probably easier to get the client to fork out for an 8-core box. But if you intend building a few machines, it's probably worth porting your concurrent code to CUDA and buying GPUs as they are much better value for money. As for the other components, I always use brand names ( Tyan for motherboards, Crucial for memory, etc. ) as I believe you get what you pay for here. HTH Nick
---------------------------------- Be excellent to each other :)
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My client would like me to recommend a system that has 8 cores, which I guess would be configured as two processors with quad cores. So I ask the experts here. Why, you may ask? Because we're running very computational intensive analysis on some switch network topologies used in communication satellites. So the quality of your next TV show or Internet connection might depend on the analysis we're performing! mac
With that much computing power, could it be time to check into distributed computing and maybe spread that load a bit? They probably have machines with some available CPU time already.
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Going to Stanford University for free?
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My client would like me to recommend a system that has 8 cores, which I guess would be configured as two processors with quad cores. So I ask the experts here. Why, you may ask? Because we're running very computational intensive analysis on some switch network topologies used in communication satellites. So the quality of your next TV show or Internet connection might depend on the analysis we're performing! mac
We've got several Dell Precision T7400's at work configured with 2x Quad Xeon running @ 3.2GHz. I'd strongly recommend getting the fastest hard disks you can afford as this much CPU power can be bottlenecked easily by slow disks (if that's the nature of your tasks). Don't skimp on memory either, go 64bit and these machine support 32GB of RAM!
Regards, Ray