[rescue] Sun Kit Needed for EE Student Here

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Tue, May 02, 2006 at 02:36:07PM -0500, Matthew Weigel wrote:
> But, are we seriously talking about a dual-450MHz UltraSparc being 
> better for computationally intensive engineering tasks than a modern 
> amd64 system running Solaris 10?

I wonder if the oeprating system matters at all. If your tasks are
computationaly intensive, but not multithreaded, than an number of 
processors greater than one is a waste.

If the tasks do not page and do not do much I/O the operating system
isn't going to matter at all. If for example, operating system A takes
1000 cpu cycles to process a page fault and operating system B takes 100,000
what is the difference if there are no page faults?

The same with I/O. If it takes 1 cpu minute to fill the internal data
structures from files instead of 10 seconds, does it matter for a task
that does nothing but crunch cpu cycles for a week before it prints out
"42" and quits?

It always amazes me what people think multiprocessor systems will do. For 
example, when I helped develop that handheld gaming device, we went from a
300mHz Pentium equivalent processor to a 600mHz PII equivalent to a 1gHz PIII
equivalent within our heat/power/price budget.

The Koreans who stole our technolgy, business plan and marcom docs, used
a 400mHz dual core ARM. 'Tis a shame that NONE of the applications they
claimed you could run on it were multithreaded. So what did they have?
An expensive, power hungry ARM 400. 

BTW, if he really wants a Sun, maybe he should register as a developer and
get a new machine at half off. There's a lot to be said for learning on
something that actually works instead of being a few years old and 
starting to develop problems.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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