Date: Fri, 3 May 1996 15:01:00 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: jimd@mistery.mcafee.com (Jim Dennis) Cc: Ekrem_Gashi@ccmail.nybc.org, questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Dual Processer Support Message-ID: <199605032201.PAA14947@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199605022135.OAA02448@mistery.mcafee.com> from "Jim Dennis" at May 2, 96 02:35:58 pm
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> > I am interested installing unix operating system, which I like to use > > as a server and like to load Oracle DB. > > I don't know of a FreeBSD port for Oracle. > A quick search of their webpages reveals no hits for 'bsd' or > 'linux'. So I suspect you'd have to run the SCO binaries under > iBCS (and I don't know if that would work -- some binaries > are linked against libraries that are proprietary to SCO). I have not seen Oracle run under IBCS2 under Linux or BSD. I don't know if it will run at all. You will face two problems: 1) Shared libraries, if any (as noted above) 2) The install process, for which neither Linux nor FreeBSD have IBCS2 install tool sets or environments. > Another quick search -- this time of the Sybase pages reveals > a Linux client and server package but nothing under 'bsd'. I have personally run the IBCS2 version for the AT&T StarServer under FreeBSD (about a year ago). The install is a bugger. Like most IBCS2 code, you want to build an ls -lR of your SYSV system, install there, and ls -lR again, and diff them to see the files you should grab. > > I have dual processor 120MHz 2.00GB disk, 24MB RAM. > > > I suspect that any serious processing will use up all of that > RAM long before you'll benefit from the addtion processor -- > particularly in db applications (which are usually much more > disk and memory intensive then processor bound). > > Consider tripling the RAM (at least). I am running a two processor 16M system, and am benefitting from the second processor for CPU bound activity (actually, I'm running some calculations for relativistically invariant P-N and P-P collisions resulting in pair production to test by theory the recent experimental results in the isolation of the carrier of the strong force). I get done about 1.87 times as fast for one million events matching the constraints imposed by the physics on what the universe will or will not allow as an event (so a run is typically 12 billion events that satisfy the relativistic invariance criteria). A Sun SPARCServer2 with two 50MHz processors running WEITEC math takes about 28-32 hours, and on my Dual P90, I finish in about 18-19 hours on the BSD box. This is significantly better than the Cray 1 at Los Alamos (some of the matrix operations for the 12 Feynman-Dyson diagram soloutions are non-vectorizable, so that's to be expected). Incidently, the theory hits right on the money. 8-). Too bad it's not my theory. 8-(. So the amount of RAM necessary is really quite dependant on whether what you are running is RAM-bound. Running something that's I/O bound, of course, would cause a second processor to have no effect. > > I am debating which operating system I shall use. Now I have NT, but I > > won to install unix. > > We want to recommend Unix (at least I do). However I can't > always do so with a clear conscience -- sometimes it simply > isn't the answer. What's your applications. Me too. It depends on your application. > > I was tolled that Linux does not support dual processing. > > It might not be nearly as important as you think. However > there are groups working on SMP (symmetrical multi-processor) > support for Linux. I'm not sure about the Free/Net/OpenBSD > camps. There is alpha-level (code quality, not distribution designation) SMP support from both camps. It's alpha-level because, among other things, the are both low grain SMP implementations (ie: multiple processors can run simultaneously in user space, but only one is allowed into the kernel at a time). > In conclusion I would say that you should look at this > with a couple of thoughts in mind: > > What are you really trying to do and why? > > What resources do you have (or can you get)? > > Do you think you are qualified to make the > purchasing and implementation decisions, and/or do > the requisite research yourself or should you hire > a consultant? Ditto. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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