Mersenne Digest Thursday, September 9 1999 Volume 01 : Number 623 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 17:01:48 -0400 (EDT) From: Lucas Wiman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Macintosh Speeds > Now my question to the list is, would I be better off having these machines > participate in GIMPS via MacGIMPS on MacOS or should I run mprime on Linux? My > main concern is performance. Which performs better on the same hardware, > MacGIMPS or mprime? I would guesstimate that they all have ~32 MB of RAM, and > those that do not can get upgraded to 32 MB easily. Which route should I take? Umm, unless Mac's have changed a lot (ie become intel-based machines), you can't run Mprime under linux. Mprime is written in intel assembler! - -Lucas _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 7 Sep 1999 17:28:03 -0400 From: "Louis Towles" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Macintosh Speeds Don't give up on those 24,000 PII hours yet - they can factor, it only floating point math that messes with the video (ati rage pro I think?) Louis Towles - ----- Original Message ----- From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Mersenne List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 1999 2:39 PM Subject: Mersenne: Macintosh Speeds > > Okay, so I am here at my new job, got permission to install a GIMPS client on a > bunch of machines, cool. It turns out that >50% of the machines that I can > install a GIMPS client on are a specific model of Dell that when Prime95 is > running causes the video to flicker REALLY bad. So there goes about 24,000 PII > MHz down the drain because of poor design by Dell. > > So in my quest to add more machines to GIMPS I run across 20+ Macs that are in > perfectly working order in a storage room. They have been obsolteted simply > because they are Macs, and are all mid range Power Macs to low end G3s. The room > with plenty of power and plenty of network drops. Perfect dedicated GIMPS > clients in my opinion! > > Now my question to the list is, would I be better off having these machines > participate in GIMPS via MacGIMPS on MacOS or should I run mprime on Linux? My > main concern is performance. Which performs better on the same hardware, > MacGIMPS or mprime? I would guesstimate that they all have ~32 MB of RAM, and > those that do not can get upgraded to 32 MB easily. Which route should I take? > > Thanks in advance for any help! > > -Marc > > Marc Getty [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Department of Dental Informatics, Temple University > http://www.temple.edu/dentistry/di/ 215-707-8192 > _________________________________________________________________ > Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm > Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 01:16:29 +0300 From: Jukka Santala <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Mersenne: Macintosh Speeds Louis Towles wrote: > Don't give up on those 24,000 PII hours yet - they can factor, it only > floating point math that messes with the video (ati rage pro I think?) This reminds me, could it be possible to press more CPU-power from existing equipment by utilizing different parts of the processor at the same time... eg. having the FPU work on LL-tests while the integer-side tries trial factoring is a good example. Would the cache losses far outweight any advantage, are the LL-tests for example using also all of the integer-side or would it be a surefire way to lead your CPU into quick heat-death..? Also, while a simple test could be run by multitasking I doubt most schedulers could take this into account, nor do I in fact know if any computers can operate one or both pipelines while doing FPU calc. -Donwulff _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 07 Sep 1999 20:49:43 -0400 From: Marc Getty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Macintosh Speeds > Louis Towles wrote: > Don't give up on those 24,000 PII hours yet - they can factor, it only > floating point math that messes with the video (ati rage pro I think?) You are indeed correct, the integrated ATI Rage Pro is the card in the Dell OptiPlexes that I have. When running LL tests the video flickers quite badly. George beat you by 4 minutes by suggesting that I try them as factoring clients, which I will test and see if they too cause screen flicker tomorrow. If they do not I will have them all factoring by weeks end. I did not know that mprime was intel based before today, so that is scratched off the list. So now it is down to MacGIMPS vs MacLucas on the Macs. Any input? - -Marc Marc Getty [EMAIL PROTECTED] Department of Dental Informatics, Temple University http://www.temple.edu/dentistry/di/ 215-707-8192 _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 08 Sep 1999 11:09:38 +0100 From: Michael Oates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Any one tried Prime95 with a new AMD Athlon ? As one of the main features of this new processor is the high speed floating point operations, I was wondering if anyone here has tried one, and what sort of speed are you getting with Prime95 ? For my next upgrade I am not sure which path to take, Single Athlon or Dual PIII Thanks, Mike, - -- ATLAS CELESTE - Bevis Star Atlas - & "The CD-ROM" http://www.u-net.com/ph/mas/bevis/ Astronomy in the UK http://www.u-net.com/ph/ _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 8 Sep 1999 22:06:22 +0200 From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Re: Any one tried Prime95 with a new AMD Athlon ? On Wed, Sep 08, 1999 at 03:21:44PM +0100, Michael Oates wrote: >Well I heard that with some programs (and Prime95 may just be that type of >program) may run up to 40% faster than a Pentium III of the same speed. That sounds like an AMD figure... If I remember the discussion right, Prime95 can't (even with a recode) utilize all three pipelines of the Athlon. You'd probably get 10% (SWAG) over a PIII at the same clock frequency. >Also a single Athlon is cheaper than a dual PIII, so for the money the >Athlon may be a much better bet. That is, of course, a valid point. But if you only want performance for the money, the Celeron is _much_ better than all other (x86-compatible) CPUs on the market -- it's cheap, and it is in fact (at least in the last benchmark I read) a bit quicker than a PIII at the same clock frequency. (Perhaps a little slower, but at least not outperformed.) Same for FP work (read: Prime95). And there will be Celerons with Streaming SIMD (aka KNI) soon, too. /* Steinar */ - -- Homepage: http://members.xoom.com/sneeze/ _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1999 16:01:03 -0600 From: "Blosser, Jeremy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Mersenne: Crazy thought of the day... Seeing as how the Sega Dreamcast was officially released here in the U.S. today... and the list has been REALLY quiet (due to school starting?), I looked at the specs... and sure 'nuff, apparently, the Hitachi SH4 can do 2 FPU ops per cycle (single or double precision) and has the good ole SIMD architecture that the PIII and 3DNow chips seem to support, with 128-bit ops, but again, only for 32-bit single precision floating point numbers... so bummer there... but the superscalar FPU is nice... Anyway, since the Dreamcast runs WinCE, a port to it would be pretty easy... the only problem I see is storing intermediate files, since the "memory packs" are only 128k or something right now... I suppose you could store it somewhere on the 'net by using its built-in 56k modem or whatever... Well, back to work... - -Later _________________________________________________________________ Unsubscribe & list info -- http://www.scruz.net/~luke/signup.htm Mersenne Prime FAQ -- http://www.tasam.com/~lrwiman/FAQ-mers ------------------------------ End of Mersenne Digest V1 #623 ******************************
