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Date:      Wed, 25 Jun 1997 22:07:58 -0800
From:      Chris Browning <cbrown@aracnet.com>
To:        Torbjorn Granlund <tege@pdc.kth.se>
Cc:        freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: New monster server
Message-ID:  <33B2073E.DEBDE29F@aracnet.com>
References:  <199706250140.DAA01747@squid.pdc.kth.se>

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> My company intends to purchase a new compute and disk server early
> this
> fall.  We originally intended to get an Alpha system, but it seems
> hard to
> get a reasonable OS without paying an outrageous amount of money.
> (NetBSD
> might be good enough for the alpha platform; but it doesn't seem to
> get a
> lot of usage.)

Well, it sounds like you are looking for one of the free Un*xes.  The 
price is certainly right :-)

> We would like the machine to have on the order of 25 SPECint95
> (summing the
> SPECint95 on the individual CPUs in case we go for an SMP solution).
> So a
> single CPU 21164 won't do.  A single cpu 21264 would do.  A 4 CPU
> P6/200MHz/512KB would do.

Hmm, I guess a 4-way Pentium(R) Pro Processor system would do.  I think
that
the benchmarks say 8.5 SPECint95 and 6.5 SPECfp95.  I'm not to sure that
you can
"add" them together to come up with a 26 SPECint95 machine :-).

>  (It seems difficult to get 4 CPU P6
> motherboards,
> since the Orion isn't made, and the 440BX is not yet available.)

Now, you TOTAL confused me here.  The 82450GX (Orion) isn't made? 
Please tell 
our factory! We build boards every day with this chipset.  Believe me,
it is alive 
and well.  Also, you should have no trouble getting a 4-way PPP box.  I
can name
atleast 6 vendors off the top of my head.

> I'd be interessted in hearing your comments.  Realistically, will I be
> able
> to get a 4 CPU FreeBSD system to work well enough this fall?  If not,
> when
> do you think that could happen?

Hmm, I am pretty new at FreeBSD, but 4way Linux does work right now.

> I am willing to spend about $20000 for the hardware.  It is highly
> unlikely
> that Digital will want to sell me a dual CPU 21164 or a single CPU
> 21264 for
> that amount money.  Will a 4 CPU P6 be cheap enough and will it be
> stable
> enough to use for heavy load?

You can certainly get a 4way PPP system for $20000.  Of course, this
depends on
what HW you want to through on it.  You might want to check 
http://www.onsale.com.  They have 4way capable boxes for sale almost
every day
on there.
  As for the "heavy load".  I am not sure what type of load you will be
dealing with, but the 4 way PPP system have set many price/performance 
records on the TPC-C benchmarks. (Yikes, that marketing side of me is
coming
out :-).

Chris

Disclaimer:  I don't speak for anyone, especially Intel.



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