[mpich-discuss] choosing processors for MPI and MPICH apps

[Reuti]

Am 12.01.2011 um 05:16 schrieb zach:

> Is there any kind of general guidelines to use when choosing multicore processors for machines you intend to run parallelized mpich applications on? in terms of architecture, cache size, memory bandwidth, etc
> 
> for example i found a dual processor quad core intel xeon E5506 server box for a decent price. would this system be able to scale towards at least 7x with MPI? How can I tell before buying something and trying it?

It depends on the application. Some need memory bandwidth and it might be better to have 8 sockets with a single core CPU and memory attached to each CPU - in a multicore CPU they would fight for the memory access. Other ones need large and fast scratch space on disk - either by a local RAID0, a parallel filesystem or some local disks - one for each process. Other applications need high network bandwidth, and have a need for Infiniband...

Best way is to borrow some machines and benchmark your application.

-- Reuti