I was given an old DEC AlphaServer. It has a 64-bit Alpha chip. The
machine is running Windows NT 4 Server. Because the chipset is Alpha
and NOT Intel, regular Windows executables won't run on it.
I'd love to use the power of this 64-bit AlphaServer to find the next
Mersenne prime. I have had some problems getting flavors of Linux and
Unix to run on this box. This is why I've gone back to the original OS
of this server.
I am asking that the latest GIMPS client be ported to run on my DEC
AlphaServer running Windows NT 4 Server.
The x86 version of GIMPS is heavily optimized with assembly code that has
been highly tuned to the Pentium-II/-III FPU pipeline, as well as the the
SSE SIMD operations of the P4. This task took many 1000s of man hours
spread over a period of years by the project creator, George Woltman, and
was only justifiable by the very large number of x86 systems out there.
The 'generic' version of mprime, with the Lucas Lehmer FFTs coded in C is
considerably less efficient, however, it shouldn't be that hard to tweak a
version of `mprime` to run as a alpha windows command line program, if you
have a C compiler for it.
I'm curious what clock speed your Alphaserver runs at? I believe those
topped out at around 1Ghz, with most of them in the 200-600Mhz range, and
even with the Alpha's relatively high MFlop/Mhz ratio, they still can't
compete with todays $600 PCs running 3000MHz P4's. This would make it
rather hard to justify the porting effort for a single server.
I'm also curious, as I have a AlphaStation 250 4/266 which I acquired
(for free!) with Tru64 installed. The machine is presently running
Debian Linux and I had no problem whatsoever installing it.
I too have an AlphaStation and occasional access to large machines
(once a 16 way 1.15GHz but alas, probably never again <sigh>).
Mlucus is optimized for the Alpha
Recommend using mlucas for factoring. From my experience, LL is not
efficient enough to justify.
The Alpha MHz brief, brief history: The AlphaStation 250 4/266 is a
266MHz with the EV4 instruction set. Pretty slow (but faster then the
Intel of the day circa 1992/1993).
The next generation, mid-1990's, was EV5 designated as 5/nnn (where nnn
is the MHz) for example 5/625.
Then the EV6/nnn came out (roughly 1998/1999) and were clocked slower
then the EV5.
Yet EV6 are much faster due to the technology incorporated (which, I
believe, Intel/Itanium uses now). The 6/525 is roughly 1.7-1.8x faster
then the 5/625.
The last generation, EV7, came out sometime around 2001/2002.
The EV7 is the very similar to the EV6 with the mesh architecture and a
smaller die size.
The latest EV7 came out this year and runs 1.3GHz. This is the last of
the Alphas..
LL is much faster on the P4. but Alpha's still rock when it comes to
factoring.
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