On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:09:54 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Well, yeah - but I'm not going to find it going to the local Best Buy,
>> that's what I mean.  :-)
> 
> It is indeed not a "Personal Computer" sort of thing. :-)

Though it'd be nice to have one or three. ;-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Though it'd be nice to have one or three. ;-)

I'll just rent em when I need em. :-)

It was funny, tho. I read someone talking about all the "nosql" databases, 
and how people were complaining SQL doesn't "scale".  He said "SQL scales 
fine. What the people mean is that SQL doesn't scale if you want to use a 
commodity piece of hardware like Amazon rents. This is what we have in my 
office for testing:" and gives the stats on a 96-CPU 256G RAM SQL processor. 
He says "That's the low-end base machine for testing, not the production 
system."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    C# - a language whose greatest drawback
    is that its best implementation comes
    from a company that doesn't hate Microsoft.

Post a reply to this message

On 14-7-2010 17:17, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> And my point is "where the **** do you get a system that can handle 
>> more than 16GB of RAM from?!"
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/25z4y9r
> 
or e.g. http://www.sgi.com/pdfs/4185.pdf

Post a reply to this message

Le 14/07/2010 17:51, Jim Henderson nous fit lire :
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2010 09:11:04 +0100, Invisible wrote:
> 
>>> Sure, but the system may well have 128 GB of memory installed in it
>>> (for example), and only 23 GB allocated to that specific machine -
>>> that's my point.
>>
>> And my point is "where the **** do you get a system that can handle more
>> than 16GB of RAM from?!"
> 
> GIYF. ;-)
> 
> Hint:  It's not your typical off-the-shelf desktop PC.  We're talking 
> very specialized hardware here.

Well, a 24GB system is expensive but main-street now.
(I built one in june): based on i7 implied triple channel memory, and
therefore most single i7-supporting motherboard are limited to 24GB.
Finding a set of 6 Ram-stick to fill the slots is rather easy too, as
memory-maker/seller make kit ready to install (and with warranty).

Motherboard: about 200€
Memory: about 800€
CPU: anywhere from 200 to 1000€
Box: from 50€ to 200€ (according to the cooling and other
easy-life-making: hand-screw, clip-on...)
and so on for the small details (mouse, keyboard, graphics card(s),
display...)

There you go, a system with more than 16GB.

Post a reply to this message

> GIYF. ;-)
> 
> Hint:  It's not your typical off-the-shelf desktop PC.  We're talking 
> very specialized hardware here.

What like this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173974

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> It was funny, tho. I read someone talking about all the "nosql" 
> databases, and how people were complaining SQL doesn't "scale".  He said 
> "SQL scales fine. What the people mean is that SQL doesn't scale if you 
> want to use a commodity piece of hardware like Amazon rents. This is 
> what we have in my office for testing:" and gives the stats on a 96-CPU 
> 256G RAM SQL processor. He says "That's the low-end base machine for 
> testing, not the production system."

Presumably that's not x86 though.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Presumably that's not x86 though.

I didn't look into it that deeply. Why would you think it's not?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    C# - a language whose greatest drawback
    is that its best implementation comes
    from a company that doesn't hate Microsoft.

Post a reply to this message

>> Presumably that's not x86 though.
> 
> I didn't look into it that deeply. Why would you think it's not?

I got the impression that x86 CPUs are designed to communicate with only 
a fixed number of peers.

For example, a socket 939 Athlon can only be run in a single-chip 
configuration. But a socket 940 Opteron has an extra pin which enables 
it to run in single-chip or dual-chip configuration. (But not 
triple-chip or more.) In later Opteron generations, part of the model 
number tells you what the maximum number of chips you can wire together 
is. I gather Intel Xeon chips use a similar system.

Given that the reviews talk about 1-chip, 2-chip, 4-chip and even 
8-chip, I very much doubt anybody has bothered to design a 96-chip part. 
Who would they sell it to, after all? (And wouldn't it need 96 extra pins??)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2010/07/the-new-amazon-ec2-instance-type-the-cluster-compute-instance.html

> Rent a quad-core 2HT 2.93GHz 23G RAM 1.5TB disk compute engine for $1.60/hour.

  I wonder if POV-Ray 3.7 could be compiled for this monster:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_%28computer%29

  It has more cores than the maximum number of threads POV-Ray would use for
an average-sized image (iow. you basically get a core for each square to which
the image is subdivided by POV-Ray for rendering).

  A giant poster-sized image could perhaps require rendering more than one
square per core...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   A giant poster-sized image could perhaps require rendering more than one
> square per core...

I think the first job should be rendering a 300 DPI 1:1 scale image of the 
computer it ran on. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    C# - a language whose greatest drawback
    is that its best implementation comes
    from a company that doesn't hate Microsoft.

Post a reply to this message