On Wed, 18 Jun 2003, Tom Duerbusch wrote:
> The part of offloading cycles to a cheaper platform, is that we would
> be offloading to a more expensive platform (intel). Not that the Intel
> box isn't cheap, but the economic reasons for server consolidations is
> to get away from these "cheap" boxes.
What's cheap and what's expensive depends on the workload. People aren't
using IA32 CPUs to make super computers because that path's dear. They
do it because it's the cheapest way to get the CPU power.
>
> Until a few months ago, I've had the impression that putting cpu type
> loads on the mainframe wasn't economical compared to putting the same
> loads on Intel or Sun platforms.
>
> But then I start hearing about some other sites, one that had 7 Linux
> images in LPAR mode, using 9 processors. Apparently, it was
> economically justifiable. I still don't understand how. But it did
> open my eyes to "run the numbers" instead of throwing it out just based
> on an outdated "rule of thumb".
Okay, run these numbers:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ time bin/bm.perl
real 0m3.247s
user 0m3.160s
sys 0m0.020s
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 4
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
stepping : 4
cpu MHz : 1410.211
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge
mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips : 2811.49
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ cat bin/bm.perl
#!/usr/bin/perl
#use integer;
$i = 0;
while ($i < 1000)
{
$j = 0;
while ($j < 10000)
{
++$j;
}
++$i;
}
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$
This is on a cheap box bought on price. Well, it did have to be an
Athlon, and I did want an Asus motherboard.
If you want a longer comparison, here's one with "while ($i < 1000)"
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ time bin/bm.perl
real 0m31.986s
user 0m31.610s
sys 0m0.100s
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$
See you our CPU stacks up against mine.
--
Cheers
John.
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