[Beowulf] power usage, Intel 5160 vs. AMD 2216

[Jon Bernard]

So it looks like the 53xx, despite being rated at 15 watts less than the
Opterons, draws more power at peak load, which seems to be what our
second vendor is suggesting for the 5160 vs. the 2216.

I'll note that Ron's 11000 watts/32 nodes is 343 watts/node, not far
from your Intel numbers.


----- Original message -----
From: "Peter Kjellstrom" <cap at nsc.liu.se>
To: beowulf at beowulf.org
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:05:42 +0200
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] power usage, Intel 5160 vs. AMD 2216

On Wednesday 11 July 2007, Jon Bernard wrote:
> Two vendors recently bid on a cluster we're buying, and we've got
> questions about their power estimates that I though I'd also put to
> the list while we wait for the vendors to respond.
>
> Vendor A estimates that at peak load a compute node with two AMD
> 2216s, 4 GB of 667 DDR2 RAM, a hard drive, and an IB board will draw
> 265 watts. Vendor B estimates that such a node will draw 450 watts.
>
> Vendor B also estimates that a similar machine with two Intel 5160s
> will draw 550 watts at peak load.
>
> Anybody have any actual measurements?

For our latest big procurement I measured (among other things) the
actual power draw of all final candidates. One was a dual Opteron 2220
(2.8 GHz dual core part) which at idle/load scored 218W/301W this with
12 dims (24 gig) one sata drive and no IB.

A 2nd vendor measured 230/315 for a very similar configuration.

We did not test any intel 51xx, only 53xx (quad core). The 2.33 GHz 53xx
(80W tdp if I remember correctly) did around 260W/350W (this with one
drive and 8 fbdimms with a total of 32 gig).

An IB board is typically <10W, Mellanox says that their LX single port
DDR card is only 4W.

Hope that helps a bit, Peter

> Jon