CCL:Origin300, Linux Cluster (Re:)

[Mikhail Kuzminsky]

According to Eugen Leitl
> From beowulf-admin at beowulf.org Thu Jul  4 20:36:41 2002
> From: Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org>
> To: <Beowulf at beowulf.org>
> Subject: CCL:Origin300, Linux Cluster (fwd)
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2002 12:04:07 -0400
> From: Jianhui Wu <wujih at BRI.NRC.CA>
> To: chemistry at ccl.net
> Cc: amber at heimdal.compchem.ucsf.edu
> Subject: CCL:Origin300, Linux Cluster
> Dear Colleagues,
> I have a budget around $40k CN to shop for a new computer system, which
> will be used for MD simulation, virtual screening and some bioinformative
> stuff. Currently, I am looking at two options: Origin 300 (2 cpu) or PC
> Linux Cluster. I would like to hear your experience with these systems and
> spend the limited budget right.
> 
> (1) An Origin 300 2cpu 500MHZ cost around $35k. Are you using this kind of
> system? Do you have benchmark of MD simulation (such as Amber) for this
> system? Do you regret your purchase?
  Some time ago I looked somewhere on //www.sgi.com a set of benchmarks
results, in particular on Amber, for some SGI systems.
  But it's absolutely clear that you'll have much more high performance
and much more better price/performance ratio if you'll 
build cluster of x86-based PC's w/1-2CPU's per node. Moreover, usually
you'll have better performance simple per CPU, i.e. at equal number of
processors. 
  
  The main reasons for choice of Origin 300 may be a)the presence of
some chemical software which may "exist" for IRIX but absent for Linux;
b) The total cost of ownership, because cluster requires much more
"human time" for installation and administration.

Mikhail Kuzminsky
Zelinsky Inst. of Organic Chemistry
Moscow