Commoditization of 4-way

On Wed, 19 May 2004 09:30:57 +0200, Jan Vorbrüggen
wrote:
opteron is amazing in that it has its switching technology built in via ht.

Yawn - the 21364 had that how many years ago?

Considering that the 21364 only just started shipping a few months
before the Opteron... not much (Jan. 2003 for the Alpha EV7, April
2003 for the Opteron). Also there is a grand total of *ONE* system
being sold with the Alpha EV7 processor, the HP GS1280, and it'll set
you back a cool million dollars or so.

In short, not really a worthwhile comparison. For all intents and
purposes, the 21364 is a non-existent product.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

In article ,
Tony Hill wrote:

In short, not really a worthwhile comparison. For all intents and
purposes, the 21364 is a non-existent product.

Can we please stop wasting everyone's time by telling other posters
that their example is irrelevant because it doesn't ship in enough
volume, etc? It's pointless.

-- greg

On 18 May 2004 23:59:57 +0100 (BST), Thomas Womack
wrote:

....snip...
I'm not sure I'd call a system with two dual-core CPUs a quad system,
though I'm not quite sure where that prejudice comes from; I suppose
that part of the issue of a quad system is the enormous motherboard
required physically to fit four sockets, four cooling systems, four
sets of memory ... on memory-intensive tasks I think I'd rather have
more memory subsystems than more cores, dual-core Opterons will be no
less memory-starved than 800MHz FSB Noconas.

Tom
With each dual-core chip containing the same dual channel memory
controller as the current crop of socket 940 chips, each core would
have the same memory bandwidth as current socket 754 Athlon64. While
not quite as impressive as A64 FX/Opteron, A64 xx00+ is still a
formidable CPU and doesn't seem to really badly suffer from
insufficient memory bandwidth. If I could get a quad A64 on the cheap
(comparably priced to the dual Opteron 242/MSI Master2-far I am
building now), I'd go for it without much thinking. Unfortunately
it's not possible technically (the number of HT links enabled on each
CPU etc.) But 2 dual core Opterons would closely resemble that
hypothetical quad A64, just better because it would have 2
heatsinks/fans less.
As for having more memory subsystems than cores, here is an article
comparing lowly (among dual boards) MSI K8T Master2-far to higher end
Tyan K8W Tiger and yet even higher Tyan K8W Thunder.
http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rlid=68739
Contrary to expectations, the more expensive Thunder with both CPUs
connected to own memory is not any better than its humble competitors
with one CPU accessing the memory through the other (give or take a
fraction of a percentage point).

Tony Hill wrote:

On Tue, 18 May 2004 15:54:33 -0600, Rob Stow
wrote:

Never anonymous Bud wrote:

Where did you find a price? I can't locate ANYONE that has that MB available.

$1545 at Lynn Computer, up from $1495 a couple of weeks ago.
They are taking orders only - no stock yet.
http://www.lynncomp.com



Ahh the infamous Lynn Computers. They ALWAYS take orders for thing,
regardless of whether or not they plan on getting them in stock! That
store is constantly listing products that won't ship for months.


If *any* vendor doesn't have something in stock I don't order
from them. At best I'll ask them to call or e-mail me when
they do actually have something to sell. And with any vendor,
if the product isn't at my door within 24 hours of the promised
delivery date I call in to cancel the order.

As far as Lynn goes, I've ordered three Tyan S2885 motherboards
and 6 Opty processors to put on those - two orders altogther -
and both orders arrived 3 days later. Not that bad for cross
border shipping (US to Canada). I suspect it takes 24 hours to
get to Regina and then another 48 hours to cover the last 70 km
from Regina to Moose Jaw.

In article ,
wrote:

Contrary to expectations, the more expensive Thunder with both CPUs
connected to own memory is not any better than its humble competitors
with one CPU accessing the memory through the other (give or take a
fraction of a percentage point).

Given that you didn't give any details at all, the most likely
explanation is pilot error. I know that STREAM on Linux 2.6 with the
bios interleave set off and a user-level utility to confine the
processes appropriately is much improved. And my testing with
various HPC codes also showed significant improvement.

-- greg

i agree that the 2 core opterons will likely open the floodgates on
4-way heaven and begin the price falls.

Tony Hill wrote:
Hopefully that time might be coming soon, that's what started this
whole thread. The trick is that next year AMD is expecting to ship
dual-core Opterons that are pin-compatible and
infrastructure-compatible with existing single-core Opterons. If all
goes according to plan they will be drop-in replacements for current
Opterons, so all you would need for a 4-core machine is a "2
processor" motherboard (whether or not that makes a true "4 processor"
system or just a "2 processor with dual cores" machine depends on your
point of view).

Those 2P motherboards start at only ~$200, though good ones will cost
you more like $500. No word yet on the price of the chips, but they
might sell for $350 a piece, and most likely will sell for less than
$700 a pop (2 cores for $700 will keep in your price range of
single-core for $350).

That's another thing, dual-core 2-way processors. However, I think these
server makers are actually looking to getting down the price of a true 4-way
processor system down to the $5000 range.

Yousuf Khan

On Thu, 20 May 2004 01:45:39 GMT, (Greg Lindahl)
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

Contrary to expectations, the more expensive Thunder with both CPUs
connected to own memory is not any better than its humble competitors
with one CPU accessing the memory through the other (give or take a
fraction of a percentage point).

Given that you didn't give any details at all, the most likely
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Have you not noticed the link? Just in case I am providing it here
again: http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rlid=68739
Please note that I bear no responsibility for either the content of
that article or the methodology the authors applied to their
benchmarks. I just found the comparison interesting and worth noting
in the groops.

explanation is pilot error. I know that STREAM on Linux 2.6 with the
bios interleave set off and a user-level utility to confine the
processes appropriately is much improved. And my testing with
various HPC codes also showed significant improvement.

-- greg

"Andi Kleen" wrote in message
...
snip.

As far as I can see the main difference in practice right now is that
there is a PCI-E connector and there isn't one for HT. And the error
handling issues Del noted (hopefully be fixed with HT 2.x)
Ok and HT hotplug would be nice too.

-Andi

Can't have much wire and a connector in a 56 ps skew+jitter allocation
(at 1.6 Gb/s), with no provision for aligning clock and data. :-(
The last draft of V2.0 goes to 2.8 Gb/sec still with no alignment. I'll
have to look at the "networking extensions", but the 8131 doesn't have
any recovery. Maybe there is a new version coming.

del

In article , says...
In article ,
Tony Hill wrote:

In short, not really a worthwhile comparison. For all intents and
purposes, the 21364 is a non-existent product.

Can we please stop wasting everyone's time by telling other posters
that their example is irrelevant because it doesn't ship in enough
volume, etc? It's pointless.

Is it any more pointless than to say "XYZ" did it first, but
failed in the marketplace? ...other than in the .folklore group?


--
Keith