>I disagree. >I lose 12-15% of the engine when I add the second one and I lose >another 15% (or more) for each engine thereafter, up to about 8 or 9 >engines. Going from >a 308 to a 309 adds only about 300 MIPS when an >engine is (nominally) 450 MIPS. > >That to me is more than "almost" not worth figuring. >Unless you like losing 1/3 of an engine?
What are you losing? It isn't as if these processors are off playing solitaire. They're paying the cost of communication to allow more simultaneous operations for YOUR workload. The primary benefit of this approach is to reduce the queueing impacts of multiple units of work competing for a finite resource. If you don't think this is a reasonable exchange, there is nothing prohibiting you from running your workload on a series of uniprocessors that fully exploit their "MIPS" rating. This issue of "losing" resources is a false one. The implication is that somehow this is being down on purpose. The resources aren't lost, but rather redirected to accommodate the increased complexity of the system. There is virtually nothing I can think of that scales upwards without a loss of either efficiency, cost, or complexity. Regards Adam ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
