I have a cluster up and running that uses those SuperMicro Twin boxes, which have 2 nodes per rack unit, with each node using 2 AMD 6-core Istanbuls. This results in 12 cores per node, or 24 cores per rack unit. This is working fine.
Now that the 12-core AMD processors are out, I was hoping that I could get the same configuration, except using 12-core processors, and yielding 48 cores per rack unit. The problem is, as of right now, I believe such boxes aren't available yet. The closest thing is a 4-way 1U box, which gives 48 cores per rack unit, but in *1 node*. My intuition tells me that I should be wary of such a configuration because of various SMP-related locking and concurrency issues. There probably aren't many single node 48 core boxes out there so there might be surprises. I don't like surprises. The obvious thing to do would be to wait until the Twin boxes come out but my problem is that I have money to spend that has to be spent soon, maybe before the Twin boxes come out. So, I'm trying to decide what to do. (I only want 1U boxes because I have to pay for rack space). Any advice? Cordially, -- Jon Forrest Research Computing Support College of Chemistry 173 Tan Hall University of California Berkeley Berkeley, CA 94720-1460 510-643-1032 jlforr...@berkeley.edu _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
