[Beowulf] 'dual' Quad solution from Tyan

[Joel Jaeggli]

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006, Douglas Eadline wrote:

>> who says it's so great?  the HT fabric is pretty far from a "perfect"
>> low-latency 16-port crossbar, for instance.  also, is it really cheaper?
>> how about if you compare to four 2-socket DC nodes?
>>
>
> Cost is an interesting question. Presumably the more processor sockets per
> motherboard means a lower number of units sold and thus higher cost. Of
> course, you need to factor in the reduction in the number of HDDs
> (if you use them on nodes) interconnect, power supplies and packaging.
> Running benchmarks to get price/performance data seems to be the only
> way to answer such questions.
>
> In the past, there were similar discussions about quad Pentium pro systems.
> Memory bandwidth was an issue, but IIRC, the cost for a quad system was
> much higher than buying four singles.

With opterons there are some cases were if you need lots of ram, the cost 
delta for going from 1GB to 2GB or 4GB modules will handly erease the 
price difference between a 2 socket and a 4 socket system. of course that 
only happens at the ~8GB of ram and up mark.

>

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Joel Jaeggli  	       Unix Consulting 	       joelja at darkwing.uoregon.edu
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