[Beowulf] Intel Quad-Core or AMD Opteron

[Carsten Aulbert]

Hi,

Ruhollah Moussavi Baygi wrote:
> As you may be aware of, Intel has reduced the price of its Quad CPUs,
> dramatically.
> 
> Does anyone have any experience using Intel Quad-Core CPUs in a Beowulf
> Cluster?

Not yet, only with single nodes so far, but more to come :)

> 
> Do you prefer these ones over AMD Opteron?
> 

Right now, they seem to be far superior in most applications.

> Essentially, are Intel Quad CPUs having really FOUR cores? Are they
> really 64-bit processors, as Opterons are?

Yes, Yes.
Four cores where each two are sharing a common 4 MB cache. There might
be some problems with the memory interface, but that depends on your
application.

For our codes the scaling is not perfect but close to 3.2 out of 4, i.e.
4 cores work as 3.2 single cores. But that's not too bad - especially
after the recent price cut.


Carsten