[mpich-discuss] Scalability of Intel quad core (Harpertown) cluster

[Hee Il Kim]

Hi,

I recently made a Rocks cluster of 10 comuting nodes with dual Intel quad
core cpus (Harpertown). The nodes are connected with gigabit networks.

The problem is I got bad scalability from the benchmark test of Cactus which
is well-known program for numerical relativity. It might be natural with the
gigabit network. However, I suspect I missed something important or it's a
generic problem of clusters of multicore cpus because the benchmark problems
does not require massive communication between the computing nodes.

I tested openmpi, mpich as well as mpich2 but no significant differences
between openmpi and mpich2. The mpich2 was configured with ssm. After
reading some documents on nemesis and multicore cpus, I tested with nemesis
but got worse results than with ssm.

- Is there any optimized configuration option for multicore cpus like
Harpertown?
- Could it be improved only with infiniband, myrinet,...?
- If the gigabit network was the cause, could it be improved with Open-MX?

I'm a newbie on this field. The questions must be not clear to you. I
appreciate any helps in advance.

Kim, Hee Il
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