How fast are Ithanium ?

[Carlis]

Hi guys

I am wondering how a 32 core ithanium compares to an off the shelf server. I am running some simulations on a cluster where nodes are 4+4 core intel hapertown 2.66 ghz. The code is highly parallel so it can take advantage of all the cores. Would there be a very significant increase in performance?

 

[mfenn]

Hi guys

I am wondering how a 32 core ithanium compares to an off the shelf server. I am running some simulations on a cluster where nodes are 4+4 core intel hapertown 2.66 ghz. The code is highly parallel so it can take advantage of all the cores. Would there be a very significant increase in performance?

Do you mean Itanium?

Itanium is dead for HPC. It's just too much of a headache for its speed (which is quickly being eclipsed by x86 anyway). 16% of the TOP500 was Itanium in 2004. Now it's 6% with the highest-ranked machine being ranked 84th.

Here's the deal. 8 threads worth of Itanium is $500/thread. 8 threads worth of Gainestown (Nehalem-based) is $175 per thread.

Check this out: http://www.top500.org/blog/2010/02/16/about_parties_and_party_poopers

If you're willing to leave x86 behind (which you are if you're considering Itanium), you would be much better served by the new Power chips. The cheaper option (stay in x86-land) is Gainestown.

 

[Carlis]

Yes i meant Itanium. Perhaps I was a bit unclear about my situation. The story is that there is such a machine on my campus. I am wondering if it would be worth getting computer time there. I am not in charge of buying any equipment, and our grant does not allow for purchasing of any fancy supercomputers. We could perhaps buy cpu-time on an IBM blue gene 2000 core machine, but that might be expensive since it belongs to a different university. The itanium is the only specialized supercomputer that we might be able to use for free.

Best regards
Carlis

 

[mfenn]

Yes i meant Itanium. Perhaps I was a bit unclear about my situation. The story is that there is such a machine on my campus. I am wondering if it would be worth getting computer time there. I am not in charge of buying any equipment, and our grant does not allow for purchasing of any fancy supercomputers. We could perhaps buy cpu-time on an IBM blue gene 2000 core machine, but that might be expensive since it belongs to a different university. The itanium is the only specialized supercomputer that we might be able to use for free.

Best regards
Carlis

Ah, I see.

In that case, as long as your code is fairly portable, give it a go! The admins should have some walltime set aside for discretionary use and would probably be able to give you a small pilot allocation without much trouble.