For such a low density application, you might consider dual core Athlon
X2 cpus. Couple these with an entry level enthusiast motherboard
(possibly an MSI k9nu?), ECC ram, and possibly a high performance GigE
nic depending on what's on the motherboard. Intel and Broadcom based
nics are nice because they're fast, well supported by standard Linux
kernel drivers, and work with low-latency stacks like gamma.
Opteron carries a hefty price premium, and is only necessary when you
want to run 2+ socket motherboards.
Speaking of which, Mark recently pointed out to me that the new
AMD Quad FX chips (a pair of dual cores) are basically half price opterons.
From what limited info I have it looks like they don't support registered
memory, but otherwise use the same socket, same cache, etc. Seems ideal
for many HPC uses (except those which require a large number of dimms
per cpu).
Has anyone played with a pair?
Is the "Quad FX" socket actually different? Or does it just depend on
non-registered dimms being plugged into the dimm slots?
Pricing at:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_609,00.html?redir=CPT301
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