Greetings!
Aside from it's normal uses, I've been looking at using mprime as
a QA and benchmarking tool.
This is particularly important for overclocked Beowulf clusters,
where reliability is a must. And given that the price of these
is now so cheap (with a Gigaflop being achieved for under $10,000),
adaquate Q.A. procedures are a must. Re: my observations on
www.supercomputer.org.
I've recently noticed something interesting. Namely, with the so-called
effects of "burning-in" a CPU via mprime's torture test, and the
resulting effects on the CPU speed (as determined by the mprime
time test).
On one CPU, after two days worth of burn-in, the time required to
complete 100 iterations on the stock number went down, as I would expect.
On a second CPU, the time actually *increased*. From 1 day, 18 hours,
and 55 minutes, to 1d 19h 13m!
So this leads me to wonder if what I'm seeing is real, or whether
mprime is really sensitive enough to be used here. The O.S. being
used is Linux.
If mprime is indeed seeing some real effects here, I think people
need to be aware of it. Or even if it's not suitable for this, people
should also know.
If anyone knowledgeable would care to comment about mprime's suitability
for Q.A. and/or performance measurements, I would appreciate it.
Thanks!
-dwight-
