[clug] Which to go for?

[Andrew Janke]

>> The test involves about 40MB of disk I/O and a bunch of CPU.
>
> Cool - we've come a long way!
>
> The one which interests me though is:
>
> Intel 3.16Ghz Core2Duo    6144KB cache     8GB RAM  Ubuntu Hardy i386        4m 54.74s  igns
>
> Intel 3.16Ghz Core2Duo    6144KB cache     8GB RAM  Ubuntu Intrepid amd64    2m 50.41s  new igns
>
> .. so you got a 60% increase in speed by going to a 64-bit OS and kernel?  Any other serious hardware changes (actually Vladimir did these tests, not you, do you know)?  Wow!

I don't remember the speed increase being that large, in my tests it
was usually closer to 40% but certainly very noticeable. That and
remember that the i386 version would have to have been running one of
those "bigiron" kernels or whatever they were called to get to the
full 8GB. Perhaps there was something else in that part of it?

I'd have to check with Vlad. (who incidentally _is_ Russian).

What I find more interesting in this list are numbers like this:

MIPS  400MHz, R12000    8MB/32KB cache    28GB RAM  IRIX 6.5.x
     28m 12.95s  yorick         AJ
IBM   1.5GHz  G4           512KB cache     1GB RAM  OS X 10.3.9
     21m 07.00s  PowerBook G4   LC
Intel 1.4GHz  Pent III     512KB cache     4GB RAM  Debian Sarge
     15m 24.73s  Dell-1650      JFM

This means that a top of the line MIPS CPU in a $6million buck 64CPU
SGI Origin 3800 series machine with Fibre SAN disks and the works (for
the time) can be beaten by a G4 laptop of the same era....  And be
embarrassed by a Pentium III.

Now we all know that the SGI system would have whipped said contenders
with a parallel job but the point being this is what a certain lab was
sold to do exactly the task that I used for benchmarking.... :)

Horses for courses, but as it stands they would have been better off
buying 64 Mac laptops and a switch.  Certainly would have been
cheaper, and think of all the shiny fruit emblems!


--
Andrew Janke
(a.janke at gmail.com || http://a.janke.googlepages.com/)
Canberra->Australia    +61 (402) 700 883