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Subject: Re: $333.70 per elo point over my pc..

Author: Matt Taylor

Date: 19:40:30 02/24/03

Go up one level in this thread


On February 24, 2003 at 20:41:35, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On February 24, 2003 at 18:53:37, Matt Taylor wrote:
>
>>On February 24, 2003 at 18:06:14, Jeremiah Penery wrote:
>>
>>>I will respond to the stuff below, but the discussion is starting to get off
>>>course.  My assertion was that if Xeons suddenly added 50% to their clockrate
>>>overnight that they would begin to eat into the 'server' markets.  There are
>>>plenty of applications in that space that are CPU bound, where that super fast
>>>Xeon would fit nicely.  Of course it would not take the entire market, or even
>>>50% of the market.  I never said it would.  But I'd be willing to bet anything
>>>that it would take _some_ of that market (5%, 10%, who knows?).  That's all I
>>>ever tried to claim in this particular thread.
>>>
>>>
>>>On February 24, 2003 at 00:03:08, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On February 23, 2003 at 22:48:35, Jeremiah Penery wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>You seem to be ignoring that TPC-W has non-clustered x86 machines in the lead.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Where?
>>>>
>>>>Didn't see a one that wasn't a NUMA-type box with each machine having its
>>>>own I/O....
>>>>
>>>>I may have overlooked something of course.
>>>
>>>I posted it a few messages up in this thread.  But I overlooked something also,
>>>in that every submitted result for TPC-W is an x86 machine.  They're all listed
>>>as non-cluster machines, up to 16 CPUs, but I don't know what their definition
>>>of 'cluster' is.
>>>
>>>
>>>I see something else interesting though.  Top 10 TPC-C results for
>>>non-clustered(*) machines look like this:
>>>
>>>1) 128 CPU Fujitsu SPARC64 GP 563MHz
>>>2) 32 CPU Itanium2 1GHz
>>>3) 32 CPU POWER4 1.3GHz
>>>4) 64 CPU PA-RISC 8700 875MHz
>>>5) <same as 3>
>>>6) <same as 4>
>>>7) <same as 2>
>>>8) 32 CPU XeonMP 2GHz
>>>9) 32 CPU Alpha 21264A 1001MHz
>>>10) 48 CPU Sun SPARC64 GP 563MHz
>>>
>>>I'll isolate #s 8 and 9 here:
>>>
>>>8)
>>>Total System Cost   - 2,715,310 US $
>>>TPC-C Throughput    - 234,325
>>>Price/Performance   - 11.59 US $
>>>Availability Date   - 03/31/03
>>>Database Manager    - Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition
>>>Operating System    - Microsoft Windows .NET Server 2003 Datacenter Edt.
>>>Transaction Monitor - Microsoft COM+
>>>
>>>9)
>>>Total System Cost   - 10,286,029 US $
>>>TPC-C Throughput    - 230,533
>>>Price/Performance   - 44.62 US $
>>>Availability Date   - 07/30/01
>>>Database Manager    - Oracle 9i Database Enterprise Edition
>>>Operating System    - Compaq Tru64 UNIX V5.1
>>>Transaction Monitor - Compaq DB Web Connector V1.1
>>>
>>>How can such a number be explained?  I would expect the Alpha machine to win by
>>>a large margin, but it actually loses.
>>>
>>>(*) Again, I don't know how they define cluster.  I am not aware of a Windows
>>>version that has any kind of NUMA optimizations, however, which I think would be
>>>necessary to get a very good score on this type of benchmark, if indeed the
>>>machines are NUMA ones.
>>
>>"Operating System    - Microsoft Windows .NET Server 2003 Datacenter Edt."
>>
>>Hello NUMA optimizations.
>>
>>I, too, am not sure why the Alpha is beaten by the 2 GHz XeonMP (though only by
>>a narrow margin, <2%). I would say that comparing different databases is asking
>>for trouble, but I have heard that Oracle is the fastest database software
>>available.
>>
>>I believe all Intel systems with more than 16 CPUs are -definitely- NUMA.
>>Supposedly they support 16P, but I have never seen one with that many
>>processors. Most larger systems are built with a NUMA cluster of 4P nodes.
>>
>>-Matt
>
>
>there are a couple of companies producing non-NUMA machines.  IE Sequent in
>Portland
>Oregon once made a 32-way X86 box.  Fully shared memory SMP platform...
>
>But they are not in the PC price range, starting at 1/2 mil and going up
>_quickly_ as you
>add processors.

The largest I have seen is a 256-node NUMA system build with 4P Xeon nodes.
That's 1,024 processors. I have no idea what it cost, but I'm sure it carries a
hefty pricetag.

-Matt



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