[rescue] first real server hardware

[Gerhard Lenerz]

Hello all,

Friday, April 16, 2004, 4:48:08 PM, you wrote:

>> How much better is an R10K/195 Octane than an R10K/195 Indigo2?
>> Generally more modern, yes, but is it tons faster?

  good question. I have a Dual R10000/175 Octane for over a year now
  and recently I've been given a R10000/195 Indigo 2. Ok, they don't
  have the same CPU but I guess they give me a general feeling of the
  performance.

  For extremely heavy CPU bound work there is probably no big
  difference between a R10K/195 Indigo 2 and a single R10K/195 Octane.
  But what typical real-world homeuser exception is?
  

> Yes, it is TONS faster, even at the same clock speed. Strange but
> true.

  It's probably the result of the more modern architecture. Higher
  memory bandwidth, probably faster IO (XIO vs. GIO64), faster SCSI
  bus and of course a totally different architecture.

> As I understand it, the memory subsystem is badly constricted
> on the Indigo2. There's also the I/O issue.

  I've got a couple of STREAM results - some were taken from my
  system, others from http://sites.inka.de/pcde/dbp/index.html for
  which I've submitted most of my results:

  Octane 175 MHz       ~214 MB/s (avg., cc -Ofast)
  Indigo 2 175 MHz     ~108 MB/s (avg., cc -Ofast)
  Indigo 2 195 MHz     ~108 MB/s (avg., cc -Ofast) (no surprise)

  I think I've seen much higher values for faster CPUs in the Octane.
  Also the 214 MB/s is for one CPU only and if you run the binary on
  both CPUs at the same time on a Dual-CPU machine IIRC the transfer
  rate does not drop down to 50% for the individual test.

> If you move from an R10K/195 Indigo2 to an R10K/195 Octane, you will
> probably need to change your underwear when you see the difference.

  Hmmm... if an R10K Octane is the target I'd strongly recommend a
  Dual-CPU machine. It's more fun to have and maybe that also adds to
  the feeling of performance. Even if you don't have any apps that run
  on both, some load is always there that can be balanced between both
  CPUs.

-- 
Best regards,
 Gerhard                            mailto:mail at g-lenerz.de

Old SGI Stuff                       http://sgistuff.g-lenerz.de/