Selection between C2D and Xeon 3000 for PETSc Sparse solvers

[amjad ali]

Hello Dr. Satish, I am still bit confused in taking decesion and wanting
some more guidence from you and PETSc users/maint.

*Question ONE:*



Please help me in selecting out one of the following two clusters, *bit
updated/changed from my previous choices.*



As I am going to make a gigabit ethernet cluster of 4 compute nodes
(totaling 8 cores), with each node having:



(Choice 1)

One Processor: Intel Core2Duo E6750 2.66GHz, FSB 1333MHz, 4MB L2.

Motherboard: Intel Desktop Board DX38BT with Intel X38 Chipset supporting
1333/1066/800 MHz system bus.

RAM: 2GB DDR3 1333MHz ECC System Memory.



(Choice 2)

One Processor: Intel Xeon 3075 2.66GHz, FSB1333, 4MBL2.

Motherboard: Intel Entry Server Board Intel S3200SHV with intel 3200 Chipset
supporting 1333/1066/800 MHz system bus.

RAM: 2GB DDR2 800MHz ECC System Memory.



Which one system has larger memory-bandwidth/CPU-core? Better for PETSc?

Any other comment/remark?

My area work deals in sparse matrices.

I near future I would like to add 12 similar compute nodes in the cluster.
So my decision should be optimum/long-lasting.



*Question TWO:*



I want to make ROCKS V cluster on Intel x86_64 machines (selected from the
above options). ROCKS V is available separately for both i386 and x86_64
machines. But I have not seen two different version of PETSc for i386 and
x86_64 machines.

Is there only a single version for PETSc for both i386 and x86_64 machines?
IF YES, then out of "ROCKS/OS i386" and "ROCKS/OS x86_64" which one is more
suitable (efficiecy/speed/performance wise) for PETSc?



Regards,

Amjad Ali.

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 8:25 PM, Satish Balay <petsc-maint at mcs.anl.gov>
wrote:

>  On Tue, 22 Apr 2008, amjad ali wrote:
>
> >  Hello,
> >
> > Please help me out in selecting any one choice of the following:
> >  (Currently I am making a gigabit ethernet cluster of 4 compute nodes
> > (totaling 8 cores), with each node having)
> >
> > (Choice 1)
> > One Processor: Intel Core2Duo E6750 2.66 GHz Processor, FSB 1333MHz, 4MB
> L2.
> > Motherboard: Intel Entry Server Board Intel S3200SHV with intel 3200
> Chipset
> > supporting 1333/1066/800 MHz FSB .
> > RAM: 2GB DDR2 800MHz ECC System Memory.
> >
> > (Choice 2)
> > One Processor: Intel Xeon 3075 2.66 GHz FSB1333 4MBL2.
> >  Motherboard: Intel Entry Server Board Intel S3200SHV with intel 3200
> > Chipset supporting 1333/1066/800 MHz FSB .
> > RAM: 2GB DDR2 800MHz ECC System Memory.
> >
> > Which one system has larger memory-bandwidth/CPU-core?
> > Any other comment/remark?
> > My area work deals in sparse matrices.
> > I near future I would like to add 12 similar compute nodes in the
> cluster.
>
> Based on the above numbers - the memory bandwidth numbers should be
> the same. And I expect the performance to be the same in both cases.
>
> Ideally you would have access to both machines [perhaps from the
> vendor] - and run streams benchmark on each - to see if there is any
> difference.
>
> Satish
>
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