>2 p4 processor systems

[Steve Cousins]

> > If the machines that you are talking about really are 6-Way SMP nodes,
> > what are they?
> 
> afaikt, these are machines based on the serverworks HE chipset.

I just got an email from the original poster and he says that the machine
his management people were thinking of was in fact the Western Scientific
machine which has three dual-CPU nodes, complete with three disks, and six
10/100 interfaces in 1U.  

Has anyone made a cluster with these?  If so, how bad is the heat
problem? Anyone have a real price for these?

Steve
_____________________________________________________________
 Steve Cousins                 Email: cousins at umit.maine.edu
 Research Associate            Phone: (207) 581-4302
 Ocean Modeling Group
 School of Marine Sciences     208 Libby Hall
 University of Maine           Orono, Maine 04469



> serverworks has a very sparse/messy/wrong website, but on
> 	http://www.serverworks.com/products/matrix.html
> they claim to support 6 PIII's.  they also claim to provide 
> 4.1 GB/s, but I think that's merely a marketroid's dream:
> I'm guessing all 6 CPUs are on 1 or two FSB100 or 133 bus(es),
> and therefore you're only ever going to see about 1 GB/s.
> 
> 6 is such an odd number (pardon) - I wonder if it's the Intel (Corrolary)
> Profusion chipset, which actually goes up to 8 PIII's.  again, the 
> CPUs are going to be crammed onto a pitifully slow shared FSB,
> and performance is going to hurt.
> 
> HP apparently made boxes with both approaches.  the NetServer LH6000
> seems to have been the wacky SW-HE chipset.  it's DEFINITELY not 1U,
> though, or even close.
> 
> in short, these big-way PIII SMP machines seem to be based on the 
> premise that your application will fit entirely in the large private
> caches that PIII/xeons had, and that your main performance criterion
> is to stick lots of nics in lots of separate PCI buses with lots 
> of disks.  in short, the CPU doesn't do much except route DMAs,
> and you're willing to pay big for an impressive box.
> 
> pretty much the antithesis of beowulf, I'd say ;)