[MITgcm-support] new cluster advice

[Martin Losch]

Hi Mike,

did you get an answer to your question? I am no specialist, but I have  
had very bad experience with quad-core proocessors, because of memory  
access bandwidth (see a thread in October 2008). Apparently, the  
MITgcm (as most other CFD/GFD codes) have a low "computational  
efficiency" (FLOPS per memory access), so that the memory access of  
the cores must be fast, and in quad cores the core appear to compete  
for memory access causing a drastic performance drop. So my advice is  
to advoid quad-cores (or at least not to expect 4times the performance  
with quadcores).

Martin
On Feb 12, 2009, at 6:06 PM, Michael A. Spall wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I am looking to purchase a new linux cluster and am wondering if
> anyone has advice.  It needs to be pretty small initially, but  
> expandable
> (I have something like 25-30k to start).  Any advice on manufacturer,
> processor, buy now or wait for something in ~ 6 months?
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
> -- 
> ==================================================
>
> Michael A. Spall
> Department of Physical Oceanography
> W.H.O.I. MS #21
> 360 Woods Hole Road
> Woods Hole, MA   02543
>
> mspall at whoi.edu
> (508) 289-3342 (office)
> (508) 457-2181 (fax)
>
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