[Beowulf] Re: GPU boards and cluster servers.

[Li, Bo]

Hello,
It seems your platform is more suitable for a cluster. Great, and when are the products available? And is there any software support from you?
Regards,
Li, Bo
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Maurice Hilarius 
  To: Li, Bo 
  Cc: kus at free.net ; i.kozin at dl.ac.uk ; Beowulf Mailing List 
  Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 9:36 AM
  Subject: GPU boards and cluster servers.


  Li, Bo wrote: 
    Hello,
    Is it too expensive for the platform?
    The easy solution is:
    And X48 level motherboard with CF support, about $150 
    Q6600 Processor, about $170
    Two 4870X2 $1,100
    Two Seagate SATA Harddisk 500G for Raid1, about $140
    4*2G DDR2 RAM, about $150
    PSU 1000W, about $200
    A big box, about $100

    That's all, in total, $2,010.
    Regards,
    Li, Bo

  True, to a point.
  Most people will not use a desktop board for a cluster.
  Too I/O bound.
  Finally the memory capacity of these desktop boards is pretty limiting. Typically 8GB maximum. 


  Generally a XEON or Opteron chipset and CPUs will be the choice.

  Also, for most GPU/FPU performance work, the memory bandwidth bottleneck on the Intel product is too much of a negative factor.

  Lastly, for clusters, most want a rackmount chassis.
  We developed a 2U designed for a server board and 2 GPU boards.
  The big challenge there is power.

  We use dual 600W PSUs. One for motherboard, and one for dual GPU boards.



  -- 
  With our best regards,

  Maurice W. Hilarius         Telephone: 01-780-456-9771
  Hard Data Ltd.                FAX:          01-780-456-9772
  11060 - 166 Avenue         email:maurice at harddata.com
  Edmonton, AB, Canada         http://www.harddata.com/
       T5X 1Y3
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