[geeks] Are these servers that bad?

[Patrick Finnegan]

On eBay, you can get 4GB DDR2 ECC Registered DIMMs for <$10 each.  Max
power usage of 1.9kW is probably with every possible
memory/cpu/expansion/disk slot filled with a dummy load drawing the max
power available (ie, not realistic).

Still, you'd be better off power/cooling wise with a single socket E5
system.  You wouldn't have as many memory or cores, though.

As far as raw integer performance goes, though, things haven't changed much
in the last 5+ years.  Likewise, if you don't recompile your code to use
new FP instructions, you're not going to see any floating point improvement
modern Ivy Bridge Xeons vs a Xeon E54xx, core-for-core.  The best thing
that new Intel chips have going for them is that they have much more and
faster I/O coming out of the CPU than older machines (and I/O related virt.
extensions).

Pat


On Thu, Jun 19, 2014 at 10:35 AM, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Yeah, GB...
>
> DDR2 ECC Registered RAM isn't what I'd consider 'cheap', especially when
> you
> have to throw away a 2 Gig part for each 4 gig part you install.
>
> To double the RAM in that server to 128 Gig would require purchase of 32x 4
> Gig DDR2 ECC Registered RAM DIMMs, at a market price of $30/ea, or $960.
> (I've
> seen them as low as $25/ea on eBay, but not much less than that, but I
> haven't
> looked recently.)
>
>
> http://www.nemixcorp.com/8gb-upgrade-for-oracle-sun-sun-sun-fire-x4600-m2-4-d
> imm-cpu-card-x64-servers-x8124a-z.html
>
> That strikes *me* as expensive, but opinions vary, and you can sell off
> the 2
> Gig parts to mitigate the cost somewhat...
>
> Lionel
>
> > On Jun 19, 2014, at 10:10 AM, Patrick Finnegan <pat at computer-refuge.org>
> wrote:
> >
> > It's 64GB of RAM (not "megs").  The system boards have 8 dimm slots each,
> > for a total of 64 per server.  With 4GB DIMMs (fairly cheap these days),
> > you could easily take it to 256GB ram.
> >
> > 64GB isn't bad for 32 cores.  2GB/core is the minimum config we usually
> > build HPC clusters at Purdue with.
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