Enough with the vulgarities. This doesn't really belong on the RAID list
any longer, but I'll make a few points below.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marc Mutz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
>
> > > > The alphas we have here have the same number of slots.
> > > But not only one bus. They typically have 3 slots/bus.
> >
> > There are multiple pci bus x86 motherboards. Generally
> found on systems
> > with >6 slots. I have seen x86 motherboards with 3 PCI
> buses, <interrupted>
>
> I'd like to see how the x86 memory subsystem can saturate
> three (or only
> two) 533MB/sec 64/66 PCI busses and still have the bandwidth
> to compute
> a 90MB/sec stream of data.
A P-III memory subsystem is capable of probably 800MB/sec, I doubt that it
can handle more than that. Alphas and SPARCs have more than that, but you
pay through the nose for it. It's also worth noting that x86 shares memory
bandwidth when you do SMP (800MB/sec between two processors), where the EV6
Alphas have a switched memory bus. I haven't investigated that beyond
reading a couple of papers, but you can find more of that on Compaq's
website.
> > but the most
> > ive seen on alpha or sparc is 2.
>
> I never denied that such beasts exist. I just wanted to point
> out that a
> x86 machine with those mobos would come close in price to the alpha
> solution.
> I simply can't imagine that there are no alpha boxen with more than 2
> PCI busses. If I had a faster internet connection now, I'd
> check the web
> site of alpha-processor Inc.
http://www.compaq.com/alphaserver/gs80/index.html This isn't even the top
of the line Alpha, but it has 16 (that's F in hex, or 20 in octal) PCI
busses. Again, you PAY for that kind of machine. I'm sure that the top of
the Alpha line must be close to as expensive as a Sun Ultra Enterprise
10000, which goes for about seven figures. Now that we know that you can
get bigger machines out of Alpha/SPARC than you can out of "stock" x86
machines, and that you have to pay for that kind of performance, can we get
back to talking about RAID on Linux please?
Grego
