Sun Mircosystems

[toph99]

i just called the office of Sun here in Ottawa to see if they had any old systems lying around. they didn't, but the person on the other end suggested i contact their main warehouse in California. i don't think my dad would be too pleased if i made a call like that, so if anyone here lives near their warehouse, it may be worthwhile to give them a call, and see if they can hook you up with some free stuff i was going to use anything i got to crack RC5, and possibly eventually make a crack rack

just a suggestion

 

[Diffusion]

Hmm... dumpster diving for servers and workstations... I'd be amazed if Sun gave any one anything, Sparc Station 5s still go for around 400-500$! However, I think I might give a ring to the IBM headquarters near me...

 

[toph99]

i figure there's no harm in begging so i'm calling all of the companies i can think of someone suggested calling at the beginning on the business year, when is that?

 

[narzy]

good I dea (how come I did not think of that) anyone think about talking with dan compaq may have some stuff aswell, we may beable to go through my school with this as me as a rep, compinies usually open up and donate when you mention "For School"

 

[Kanly]

Drool, those Compaq Proliant servers are nice.

Can't we all or TeamAnandtech (whole group) be "Powered By Compaq" or something like that

Ah, dreams are nice.

 

[BurntKooshie]

FYI - SPARC chips are better at S@H than they are at RC5.....I mean, every little bit counts, but often its best to allow each thing to specialize....

 

[Diffusion]

Could the Anandtech dnet speed calculator be updated? I'd love to see what some chips like SPARCs, and Alphas can pull off, plus, I think some of the entrees are not correct...

 

[BurntKooshie]

The team pages is up to date, and accurate, at least as far as RC5 is concerned, however, OGR fluctuates a bit because of new client cores. The D.net pages for the Alpha's seem fairly accurate as far as I know (the standard deviation isn't too great if you look carefully). I don't know about the sparcs....how about this: buy one of each, benchmark 'em, and well update it

In all seriousness, its more a problem of finding someone who a) is on our team with access to alpha's and sparcs and b) is willing to waste time on RC5 with them. The reason I say waste is because Alpha's TEAR UP S@H. They are slower per clock than Cyrix's (obviously far faster clock speed, but that's not the point).

So as far as the team speed page, its accurate for RC5 for sure, the others I'm not quite so sure about (as they can fluxuate to some degree, because RC5 is pretty heavily optimized already at this point for most all architectures).

 

[Diffusion]

By "tear up s@h" do you mean they are fast or slow? If they are slower per clock then cyrixs that is horrible, because they are 64bit and all, they should shred 32 bit CPUs, I dunno, maybe I can get some one at my old CC to benchmark the Alpha there, that thing was a great terminal server, think it ran at 400mhz...

 

[Lord Demios]

After working in a Unix lab for 1.5 years, the machines you want for RC5 are intel based. Non-intel machines (non-PC) usually work GREAT in S@H and other projects. I could have been doing almost 200 WU's a day in my lab, if S@H had a better client. If you get these machines run Seti. For the numbers here you go

300k keys/sec on a single CPU 450 (Ultra)
600k keys/sec on a dual 450 setup (Ultra)

as for sparcs

Sparc 5 = 150k keys/sec, Sparc 10 175k keys/sec and the 20's are about 190K keys/sec

But at S@H your times for a WU would be around 7 to 11 hours per a machine.

Anyway, the above machines still sell for 500 to 12000, so don't think these one's will be free.

LD

 

[JHutch]

LD, just an FYI, you might want to look into SETI for that lab again. The command line client is pretty easy to automate with scripts and SETIQueue makes it easy to set up the equivalent of a personal proxy for seti units...

You know, it just about makes me cry to think of all that potential not being used for the good of the team!

JHutch

 

[Lord Demios]

I spent about 40 hours of time trying to get the S@H client to work. The problem was how it behaves on different shells. I will look at the newer client, but if they haven't changed it, then it will be very difficult for me to do this reliably.

LD

 

[Sukhoi]

Please check into it. 200 WU/day would be an AWESOME boost to get us past Nippon and OS/2, and into the Top 10!

 

[Goi]

The SUN Ultras I had access to did around 800KKeys/s for RC5. They aren't much, probably equivalent to a P2-300 or so, but they add up.

 

[nexus9]

If you're running RC5 on sun's, sgi's, HP's, etc. etc. you are wasting your CPU cycles. Switch 'em to seti. Seti = floating point mathematics. RC5/OGR = integer based. Suns are pretty good at floating point, but they suck at integer...

-Nexus9

 

[xyyz]

I don't know if it's appropriate to mention here... but my client has about 20+ sun workstations (2,4) lying around.

If you are interested in puchasing some I can talk to them.

As for dealing with Sun... they are bastards.

I tried procuring some surplus from them... but there was so much criteria that needed to be followed... business of a certain size... certain revenue... recommendations.... etc. all this for buying Sun's JUNK!

They do have a sales department that sells refurb stuff, but they don't sell it cheap. You'd be better off getting it from an online auction.

Anyways, if you are interested lemme know.