Geoff Jacobs wrote:
If an application is going to be using only shared memory, I have no doubt the consensus here is to use native threads or OpenMP. If the application is going to be working over a network, MPI (or PVM) is the way to go.
If threads are better for SMP, but what about Numa like SGI Altix or HP Integrity ? On the latter for instance, inter-cell (cell = 1 board with 4 cpu's) memory access suffers 200 times higher latency compared to intra-cell memory-access.
But also the AMD (and future Intel) processors are Numa. With threads you have no idea about referencing remote memory but is that a good thing?
And considering that future processors are even going more extreme in the Numa direction (e.g. the Intel 80-core), is'nt it more future-safe to go with MPI if one would start a large coding-project now?
thanks for all the reactions, toon _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
