What could be the performance of my cluster

[Craig Tierney]

It depends on what you are trying to do (doesn't everyone
love that answer). 

The number of flops your cluster can do should
be equal to:

flops = (no. of cpus) * (Mhz) * (flops per hz)

So for your cluster

flops =  8 * 1.53 Ghz * 2

  I am assuming that with SSE you can get 2 flops per cycle.

flops = 24.48 Gflops

Now, there are some issues with this.  First, you are never
going to get 1.53*2 Gflops out of a single processor.  Second,
leveraging all 8 cpus to get their maximum is going to be 
difficult if there is any communication between the nodes.

Compilers play a big role in extracting the best performance
out of the system.  If you don't have a commerical compiler
from the likes of Intel or Portland Group, I highly recommend
getting one.  You only have to purchase the compiler for where
you compile, and not where you run.  You can get away with
one copy of the compiler on your server.

If you are trying to compare the AMD system to the DS20E system,
it will depend on what you are actually trying to do.  If 
you are running single precision floating point codes that do
not require all the memory bandwidth a DS20E provides, I would
think that within 10% that AMD processor will do the work
of one 833 Mhz Alpha Cpu (You didn't say if you had 2 cpus
in your DS20e).   At least this is what I am seeing
for my codes when comparing Dual Xeon's, Dual AMD's, and
dual API 833 boxes.

Craig





On Sat, Apr 06, 2002 at 03:35:45AM -0800, Suraj Peri wrote:
> Hi group, 
> I was calculating the performance of my cluster. The
> features are 
> 
> 1. 8 nodes
> 2. Processor: AMD Athlon XP 1800+
> 3. 8 CPUs
> 4. 8*1.5 GB DDR RAM
> 5. 1 Server with 2 processorts with AMD MP 1800+ and
> 2GB DDR RAM
> 
> I calculated this to be 48 Mflops . Is this correct ?
> if not, what is the correct performance of my cluster.
> I also comparatively calculated that my cluster would
> be 3 times faster than AlphaServer DS20E ( 833 MHz
> alpha 64 bit processor, 4 GB max memory)
> 
> Is my calculation correct or wrong? please help me
> ASAP. thanks in advance.
> 
> cheers
> suraj.
> 
> =====
> PIL/BMB/SDU/DK
> 
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-- 
Craig Tierney (ctierney at hpti.com)