On 07/10/2011 11:20 PM, Laurent GUERBY wrote:
On Sun, 2011-07-10 at 20:03 +0200, Toon Moene wrote:
Last month I got past year's electricity bill - it turns out that I am
now (16 hours of weather forecasting and 4 hours of GCC bootstrapping
per day) using 3200 KWh a year - to the tune of 1100 Euros.
So the question whether a run is useful is certainly relevant :-)
Since I pay the electricity bill of some compile farm machines
I understand you here :).
New generation of hardware has made significant progress on energy
efficiency: my latest built PC is a Intel core i7 2600 4 cores 8 threads
3.4 GHz 4x4 GB of RAM with 40 GB SSD + 2TB HDD, 80+ gold PSU and it
idles around 30W and uses 110W full CPU load. PC cost is around 800 EUR
in France (19.6% VAT included).
According to your data it should reduce your bill by a factor of three
(365W => 110W), so it should pay itself in around a year: 720 EUR less
on your yearly electricity bill, assuming you counted only your PC power
consumption in your figures. And bonus nearly no noise in a case with 2
or 3 120mm fans.
I haven't had a chance to test AMD A8 processors but I will do soon.
One of the most frustrating aspects of this is that I cannot just write
an Invitation To Tender for a 1000-1200 Euro PC (I have been involved
with that process for KNMI's High Performance Computer now for over 15
years).
If I could do that, I would be able to:
1) Choose from several vendors.
2) Evaluate both "speed-of-execution" and "energy-efficiency" in a
consistent way.
3) Evaluate the use of AMD vs Intel processors independent of the
vendor of choice.
4) Get the vendor to install the Operating-System-of-choice (Debian
Testing) and run my benchmarks, so that I'll be able to check
their assumptions.
Instead, what I am currently doing to plan the replacement of the 2007
vintage machine that runs just two feet away from me, is to:
1) Gather information about upcoming Intel and AMD CPU's.
2) Estimate when they will hit the "Home and Small Business Market".
3) Hope that such a machine will indeed be priced between 1000-1200
Euro's.
4) Hope that the vendor who delivered me the current machine will have
a competitive offer (note that I want to stay with my current vendor
- I yet have to see another PC vendor making a machine that's
obviously geared towards teenagers storing bittorrent-downloaded
movies, that actually is able to work 16 hours+ per day on
*real science* at full capacity without breaking down after years of
service).
Sigh.
--
Toon Moene - e-mail: t...@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
At home: http://moene.org/~toon/; weather: http://moene.org/~hirlam/
Progress of GNU Fortran: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortran#news
