Question for HP Unix Server gurus/admins

[calbear2000]

I am submitting many large jobs onto a variety of HP machines I can use. Each machine has different jobs already running on them, and on top of that, each machine has different hardware configurations. Can you hardware gurus help me pick out the fastest machine?


For example, SERVER A has the following hardware:

HP PA-RISC System/9000 HP-UX Version B.11.00
Model J6000, 2 CPUs, 8192 MB RAM, 18432 MB SWAP, 729 MB TMP

A "top" command on that machine shows this:

Load averages: 0.59, 0.67, 0.68
215 processes: 206 sleeping, 9 running
Cpu states:
CPU LOAD USER NICE SYS IDLE BLOCK SWAIT INTR SSYS
0 0.77 81.7% 0.0% 1.8% 16.5% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
1 0.41 26.5% 0.0% 38.4% 35.1% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
--- ---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
avg 0.59 54.2% 0.0% 20.1% 25.7% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Memory: 4206616K (666140K) real, 5451560K (774152K) virtual, 3317828K free



SERVER B has the following hardware:

HP PA-RISC System/9000 HP-UX Version B.10.20
Model J5000, 2 CPUs, 4096 MB RAM, 4608 MB SWAP, 735 MB TMP


"top" on that machine produces this:
Load averages: 0.00, 0.01, 0.02
145 processes: 144 sleeping, 1 running
Cpu states:
CPU LOAD USER NICE SYS IDLE BLOCK SWAIT INTR SSYS
0 0.01 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 100.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
1 0.00 0.8% 0.0% 0.8% 98.4% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%
--- ---- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
avg 0.00 0.4% 0.0% 0.4% 99.2% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0% 0.0%

Memory: 17528K (4640K) real, 39924K (22204K) virtual, 2300260K free



Which machine A or B would get my job done faster? And why? I would greatly appreciate some insight here.
Thanks!!

 

[ProviaFan]

If your job requires lots of memory, use Server A, since it won't have to swap as much. but if the job requires more CPU, then use server B, since it appears to have less CPU utilization.

 

[calbear2000]

Its a large spice-like job - ie circuit simulation with matrices. Not sure if thats more CPU or Ram intensive.

Do you know why each machine has 3 load averages, even though they're both dual CPU's?
And what is the diff between RAM and SWAP?

Thanks!

 

[ProviaFan]

<< Its a large spice-like job - ie circuit simulation with matrices. Not sure if thats more CPU or Ram intensive.

Do you know why each machine has 3 load averages, even though they're both dual CPU's?
And what is the diff between RAM and SWAP?

Thanks! >>


I don't understand the difference between teh 3 load averages per cpu. My linux system does that, too. RAM is the physical memory (probably DIMMs of some sort) installed in the computer, and SWAP is extra disk space used as RAM if no more real RAM is available. SWAP is simulated RAM on the disk, so it is much slower than real RAM. Thus if your job requires much memory, you should go for the system with more real RAM.