[Linux-ia64] Itanium gets supercomputing software

[Duraid Madina]

Craig Tierney wrote:

> On Mon, 2003-04-14 at 14:18, Duraid Madina wrote:
>>Mikhail Kuzminsky wrote:
>>>   Taking into account that Itanium 2 has much more high performance,
>>>the price from HP looks reasonable.
>>
>>On FP-heavy workloads, perhaps. On integer workloads, hardly. And that's 
>>only comparing it against HP's own PA-8700 hardware! Compare it to more 
>>mainstream hardware and you'll see just how laughable Itanium 2 prices 
>>are. The Itanium 2 doesn't have significantly higher performance than 
>>today's Xeons. Opteron, at least for the time being, performs 
>>significantly better again.
> 
> Er, really?  What are your comparisons?

SPECint2000.

> My comparisons show that 
> Itanium 2's operate about 100% faster on my codes than my 2.2 Ghz Xeons
> (400 Mhz FSB).

That's nice.

> This is without going in and trying to tweak the code. 
> I don't know if it is running as fast as it should be.

Why am I not surprised.

> No, this still doesn't justify the price difference, but the performance
> isn't as bad as you are implying.

I was mistaken. Since Itanium 2 is in the habit of routinely performing 
integer codes at double the speed of 2.2GHz Xeons, it's

> The I2 does have integer math performance problems, but is supposed to
> be corrected with the next generation chip (Madison).

Madison will be called Itanium 2, and for good reason. Isn't it an 
Itanium 2, respun on a 130nm process and with (potentially) more cache? 
If there are any other differences, I'd be grateful if you could tell me 
about those. As far as I can see, this year's ISSCC papers still aren't 
online :(

> Unless we want start a flame war on NDA hardware, I think should be
> adding the phrase 'It depends' to any Opteron benchmarks, because it
> does.  Lets get to arguing numbers in about 2 weeks when we can.

One week to go! ;)

> And no, for MY CODES, Opteron does not perform significantly better than
> the Itanium 2 in all cases.

Does your code fit in cache? I can't think of any other reason why you'd 
perform so badly on an Opteron. Which stepping of Opteron have you been 
using?

> However, when we start to talk
> price/performance the Opteron will be the right choice for many
> applications.  However, not necessarily all of them. 

Nope, just most of them.

> I am not trying to be negative about a platform that does not exist
> (yet).

I am trying to be negative about a platform that is overpriced. ;)

> Personally I want 8 to 1000 Opteron nodes to do some real work. 

Personally, I want two Itanium 2s to stick under my desk. But I can't 
afford them!

	Duraid


_______________________________________________
Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf