[ale] high performance computing

[Jim Kinney]

It's pretty amazing what $10k will buy these days! Dual chip, 16-core
Opterons with 256GB DDR3 RAM.

The hardware you buy is based the problems to solve. FFT is floating
point so GPU is not an option. Also FFT is (typically) reasonable data
sizes so RAM is good but it's really all a CPU process. So you'll want
a CPU with the largest L2 and L3 caches you can get.

I've ordered test systems from 8anet.com and production servers from Microway.

If the problem can be broken into many discrete parts, high speed
interconnect is not needed. If the problem requires interim, parallel
checkpoint or shared memory in any form, Don't get cheap with gig
ethernet unless the data exchange is very small. Get the Infiniband
and don't look back. It's less expensive per unit of throughput than
10G ethernet.

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 1:27 PM, John Heim <john at johnheim.net> wrote:
> From: "Jeff Layton" <laytonjb at att.net>
> To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts" <ale at ale.org>
>> While I do work for a vendor I will do my very best not to behave like
>> one on this list :)  So fire away - what are your questions?
>>
>
> The immediate issue is to decide which vendors to contact. The principle
> investigator is doing parallelized FFTs  so I don't know the maximum cores
> he could use but he could probably use as many as we can get. He is writing
> a grant proposal asking for $200K - $300K.
>
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-- 
--
James P. Kinney III

Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain

http://electjimkinney.org
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