custom cluster cabinets (was Re: 1U P4 Systems)

[Bari Ari]

W Bauske wrote:

> Bari Ari wrote:
> 
>> I really don't see P4's for dense clusters. ULV PIIIs and Athlon4 with
>> SMP makes much more sense. IA-64 with SMP will probably come out ahead
>> in MFOPLS per watt and $$. We're working with parts now that offer 160
>> MFLOPS per watt vs. 20 MFLOPS per watt on the P4. Fixed point processors
>> are down to 1 watt per 1000 Mips.
>> 
>> Bari
> 
> 
> That's interesting. By ULV PIII's and Athlon4, I assume you mean the chips 
> used for laptops. I don't have any specs handy but are you saying say a
> 933Mhz laptop chip running full out takes less current than a standard 933Mhz
> PIII also running full speed? I realize such a chip will use less power
> at partial load but how do they compare at 100% busy? Even so, a cluster
> will idle some of the time so they should save some power.
> 
Some of the ULV PIIIs are down to 0.975V core voltage now. These take 
less current running flat out a top clock speed than the PIII 
counterparts. Athlon4s are much the same.

> In your example, I agree P4 vs laptop chips are not power effective but
> I'm comparing them to 21264 Alphas and POWER3+ and POWER4 based systems.
> I expect a POWER4 will be the most power effective system but one can't
> buy them yet so it's hard to say for sure. Maybe when Intel shrink the
> P4 they will get a bit better in the power usage area later this year.
> 
> For my codes, P4's substantially outperform Athlons and PIII's and at
> around $750 each, they're hard to beat. (as usual YMMV)
> 
> Wes
> 
Mips CPUs are now down to around 6W per GFlop. What would be real nice 
is if Intel would put a few floating point pipelines back into the 
XScale. They would be only a few watts per GFLOP since the fixed point 
now is only 1W per 1000Mips.

Bari