[cluster-l] Single- vs. Dual- vs. Quad-core CPUs

[Jim Phillips]

Hi,

The answer always depends on your application.  If you give me more 
details and the prices of your alternatives I can make a recommendation.

Are you limited by memory bandwidth or clock speed?  All of those cores 
share the same memory bandwidth, but the clock speed is almost the same.

Is memory an issue?  How much memory do you need per node and per core? 
If you can use shared-memory within a node then you can add cores without 
adding extra memory.  Otherwise you may need to use larger memory chips to 
fit enough memory into the node.  Quad-core is more flexible if you only 
need more memory on occasion since you can drop down to one core per node.

Is network bandwidth an issue?  Larger nodes share that bandwidth too.

Take a look at the lectures from our most recent workshop:

   http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Training/Workshop/Cluster-2006.11/lectures.html

-Jim


On Fri, 19 Jan 2007, Nils Oberg wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Our group is going to purchase a small cluster.  I'm trying to decide
> if each node in the cluster should have dual- or quad-core
> CPUs.  Does anyone have any advice for how to benchmark?  Or other
> resources that might help me get started?
>
> As an FYI, I noticed that NCSA is building a new cluster
> (http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/UserInfo/Resources/Hardware/Intel64Cluster/)
> that has dual-socket quad-core compute nodes for a total of 8 cores.
>
> Nils
>
>
>
> --
> Nils Oberg, Research Programmer
> Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois at U-C
> phone: 217-333-8365, web: http://vtchl.uiuc.edu
>
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