Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:05:12 04/15/04
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On April 15, 2004 at 11:26:28, Joachim Rang wrote: >On April 15, 2004 at 08:59:24, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On April 15, 2004 at 06:30:14, Joachim Rang wrote: >> >>>Hi, >>> >>>I read in the past of some differences between multiprocessor-Architectures >>>between NUMA and SMP. Now I heard of something called MPI? Can enybody enlighten >>>me what are the differences between this multiprocessor-Architectures(please not >>>too technical) and what the main advantages/disadvantages for Chessengines? >>> >>>thanks in advance >> >> >>SMP -> Symmetric MultiProcessing. N cpus, all can do everything from handling >>interrupts to initiating I/O. Memory is shared. >> >>NUMA -> Non-Uniform Memory Access. Just like SMP except that each CPU has local >>memory that can be accessed faster than memory on other processors. >> >>MPI -> Message Passing Interface. It is a message passing library similar to >>PVM that works mainly on clusters. Those not knowing what they are doing might >>use it on a NUMA box but it is not the best approach there. >> >>NUMA offers some problems in that it is more efficient for a CPU to access some >>parts of memory than it is to access others. If you don't plan for this, you >>simply run slower than optimal. > > >So for a chessengine a SMP-System is the best and a NUMA-System must be >addressed with special code, right? MPI works for cluster but cluster are not >efficient for chess because of latency and sharing problems, right? > >regards Joachim You got it. SMP is the easiest to use. NUMA offers more processors (scalability) but requires more programming effort and expertise. Clusters take this a step further with even larger scalability but _way_ more effort to use it.
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