[Beowulf] Intro question

malcolm croucher malcolm.croucher at gmail.com
Tue Dec 2 23:25:54 PST 2008


Its gonna be used for computational chemisty , not academic but more private
/ entrepreneurship. I been doing a lot of research in this area for a while
and was hoping to do some more on my own.

On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 2:11 AM, Robert G. Brown <rgb at phy.duke.edu> wrote:

> On Tue, 2 Dec 2008, Lombard, David N wrote:
>
>  An acoustic concern. A 1U is quite a bit louder than the normal desktop as
>> (1) they use itty-bitty fans and (b) there's no incentive to make them
>> quiet, as nobody is expected to have to put up with their screaming...
>>
>
> A good point.  I actually like Greg's suggestion best -- consider
> (fewer) 2U nodes instead -- quieter, more robust, cooler.  Perhaps four,
> but that strongly depends on the kind of thing you are trying to do --
> tell us what it is if you can do so without having to kill and we'll try
> to help you estimate your communications issues and likely bottlenecks.
> For some tasks you are best off getting as few actual boxes as possible
> with as many as possible CPU cores per box.  For others, having more
> boxes and fewer cores per box will be right.
>
> The reason I like four nodes with at least a couple of cores each is
> that if you don't KNOW what you are likely to need, you can find out
> (probably) with this many nodes and then "fix" your design if/when you
> scale up into production.  Otherwise you buy eight single core node (if
> they still make single cores:-) and then learn that you would have been
> much better off buying a single eight core node.  Or vice versa.
>
>   rgb
>
>
>> --
>> David N. Lombard, Intel, Irvine, CA
>> I do not speak for Intel Corporation; all comments are strictly my own.
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> Robert G. Brown                            Phone(cell): 1-919-280-8443
> Duke University Physics Dept, Box 90305
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-- 
Malcolm A.B Croucher
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