Dear All, Here at NE-CAT, we make extensive use of XDS in a parallel environment. We are looking to purchase some new hardware, so I am soliciting your opinions.
Our current cluster is made up of 16 nodes, each with 2 processors that have four cores, running at 2.2 GHz (I believe). We run with hyperthreading on, so 8 physical and 16 virtual cores per node. Our benchmarking with XDS (see https://rapd.nec.aps.anl.gov/wiki/RAPD_NecatStats for an example) shows a diminishing return on increasing the MAXIMUM_NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS beyond the number of physical cores, and we are wondering if this is due to the test, the processor, the RAM, or XDS. In short, will going to 2 six core processors speed up processing using up to 12 for MAXIMUM_NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS? Please do not feel the need to constrain the discussion to XDS, as we use our cluster for pretty much all the common crystallographic tasks. Thanks in advance, Frank Murphy Beamline Scientist, NE-CAT
