Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 9 Dec 1997 23:22:20 -0800 (PST)
From:      Jason Evans <jasone@canonware.com>
To:        Alex <garbanzo@hooked.net>
Cc:        Steve Passe <smp@csn.net>, current <current@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: -current, goliath, smp -- problems 
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.3.95.971209231804.248N-100000@paladio>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971208225448.1788A-100000@zippy.dyn.ml.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Mon, 8 Dec 1997, Alex wrote:
> Speaking of more CPUs, did anyone catch the release of HP's newest SMP
> server?  An 8 CPU (I'm assuming PPro) *drool*.  I'm assuming it comes with
> gobs of ram and disk space, and it amusingly enough looked like an
> overgrown dot-matrix printer with no paper.  I didn't realize there were
> production machines with more than 4 Intel CPUs *drool*.

Well, I don't know that I would necessarily expect this to be as cool as
it sounds.  I'm not an expert on this by any means, but I've
repeatedly heard the following:

Tightly coupled MP machines work well until memory bandwidth becomes a
bottleneck.  Last I heard, the memory bandwidth on Intel-based machines is
in the neighborhood of 500 MB/sec, which is enough to feed 4 processors,
but quite inadequate for 8.  So, even though there are twice as many
processors, the performance gain is not impressive.

If there's anyone else out there that knows any better, please correct me.
=)

Jason

Jason Evans
Email: [jasone@canonware.com]
Home phone: [(650) 856-8204]
Quote: ["Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" - Thomas Edison]




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.LNX.3.95.971209231804.248N-100000>