Cluster Monitoring software?

[Dan Yocum]

Robert,

I'm easily confused: in the chart, is the Alpha on the top or the bottom
of the graph?  I'm assuming that it's on the top, but then I see that
the Thunderbird falls below the Athlon (I'll admit that I don't know the
difference between the 2), which throws me.

Thanks for the clarification.

Cheers,
Dan

"Robert G. Brown" wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 6 Nov 2000, Sadiqs wrote:
> 
> > i need some help with flops please.
> > how do you go around calculating flops? :)))))
> >
> >
> 
> Well, you can easily see how I calculate ONE measure of >>bogus<< FLOPS
> in the open source code of cpu-rate, available on the website of:
> 
>   <a href="http://www.phy.duke.edu/brahma">Brahma</a>
> 
> It is something like (with lots of detail left out):
> 
>  double *d;             /* To test "double" floats */
>  d = (double *) malloc((size_t) (size*sizeof(double)));
>  total_time = 0.0;
>  total_time2 = 0.0;
>  for(k=1;k<=samples;k++){
>      start = gettod();
>      for(i=0;i<size;i++){
>        d[i] = 1.0;
>      }
>      for(i=0;i<size;i++){
>        d[i] = (1.0 + d[i])*(1.5 - d[i])/d[i];
>      }
>      delta = gettod() - start;
>      total_time += delta;
>      total_time2 += delta*delta;
>  }
> 
> (and then subtract the empty loop time and convert the times into rates,
> with a suitable definition for gettod()).  Each d[i] = (1.0 + d[i])*(1.5
> - d[i])/d[i]; is counted as four floating point operations, one each of
> add, subtract, multiply and divide.  The addressing arithmetic in the
> d-vector itself is more or less ignored, as there is always some
> addressing overhead in a loop and so it is is "part" of the cost of a
> flop, sort of, as far as I'm concerned.  This particular combination is
> chosen (with d[i] initialized to 1.0) so that it is numerically stable
> over lots of samples and yet not knowable to the compiler (so that the
> final divide is actually done and not represented as an inversion and
> multiply, which is generally a bit faster).
> 
> However, note well that the rate this returns is BOGUS.  These are
> BOGOMFLOPS, just like the "mips" your kernel talks about at boot time
> are "bogomips".  This is very important to realize.  It is certainly
> entertaining and possibly useful to know how fast your computer can do
> arithmetic under certain "ideal" conditions, but >>for this code<< that
> rate can vary by a factor of >>six<< as a function of vector length.
> 
> To understand this, I urge that you read the <a
> href="http://www.phy.duke.edu/brahma/cpu_summary.html">CPU Vector
> Performance Summary</a> on the Brahma website.  In it, I present a
> comparison of five reasonably current systems -- a (dual) 933 MHz PIII
> with RDRAM, two Athlons (original and Thunderbird) with PC133, a Compaq
> 667 MHz XP1000, and a (dual) 466 MHz Celeron with PC66.  The figure at
> the top of this page is the measured double precision bogomflop rating
> of these CPUs executing the general code above for vector lengths (in
> bytes) ranging from 8 to 16 mega.  To quote the conclusion of this very
> short summary paper:
> 
>   If nothing else, it [the figure above in the summary -- rgb] will
>   provide a fairly objective answer to the universally asked question:
>   "How fast is my CPU?" Pick a number, any number, between the maximum
>   in L1 and minimum running out of main memory (which spans almost an
>   order of magnitude in speeds!).  That's roughly how meaningful a
>   single cited speed rating for a CPU is.
> 
> ...not that this number cannot be used constructively, either in research
> proposals or in program or beowulf design.  Still, the >>figure itself<<
> is far >>more<< useful, as it lets one see the tremendous variation in
> effective CPU floating point performance for a certain class of core
> loop code.
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
>    rgb
> 
> --
> Robert G. Brown                        http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
> Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
> Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
> Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu
> 
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-- 
Dan Yocum, Sr. Linux Consultant
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