Number-cruncher For Work

Post by **Bagpuss** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 4:50 pm

Folks

Need some techie advice.

We have produced a series of analysis software that we run repeated Monte Carlo simulations on to analyse MoD issues. It's a mixture of C# and bespoke sim software.

At the moment we are thinking of getting a MSI dual CPU motherboard, two 2.2Ghz dual core Opterons, 2 gigs of RAM (with a view to get another 2 at some point) and 3 x 50 gig HDD in RAID 0+1 for speed and backup.

Anyone got any thoughts on this? Would you focus the money anywhere else? We're looking to spend around a grand so this setup gets close to that.

Post by **Hippy** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 5:20 pm

Number crunching tends to be very memory intensive, probably best to look at where your bottleneck would be, see if you can optimise for memory.
Is a raid setup necessary?
What cheaper backup solutions could you try?

What about a single quad core cpu instead of 2 dual core cpu's?

Post by **Moby-Dick** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:05 pm

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'>3 x 50 gig HDD in RAID 0+1 for speed and backup.</div>

you'll need 4 drives to run raid 0+1 you can run 3 in RAID 5 , but I'd go for the 4 personally.

Is your code optimised for multithreading ?

Post by **Bagpuss** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 3:15 pm

Code is not really optimised, we'd be running multiple instances of the same software with different setups mainly. Something we're working on now (when we get time!)

A quad core eh? Seems pricey given the extra cost of a MB to support it. This might be a bizarre question; but would 2 x 2 be faster than 1 x 4?!

I think we meant RAID 5, which means we need just 3 HDD. Seems like a safe option and as it'll be a standalone, encrypted desktop it seems the easiest way of backing up for us.

Post by **Hippy** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 3:45 pm

<a href="http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=330169" target="_blank">Intel Core 2 Quad - Â£550</a>

<a href="http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=330522" target="_blank">Abit AB9 Quad GT Â£119</a>

Vs

<a href="http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku= ... 6501023430" target="_blank">MSI K8N Master2 - FAR Dual CPU motherboard Â£165</a>

<a href="http://www.komplett.co.uk/k/ki.asp?sku=312339" target="_blank">AMD Opteron 2.4ghz Â£250 x 2 = Â£500</a>

They're just the top results i could find from Komplett, but the prices work out pretty evenly if choosing 2 x 2.4ghz opterons Vs 1 x Quad core 2.4ghz Intel.

Might be worth reading <a href="http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/2006/11/3 ... _cores_uk/" target="_blank">this</a> to make up your own mind which cpu's are going to be faster.

Post by **Bagpuss** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:52 pm

Ta for that Hippy; a good read.

Decisions, decisions...