Re: A Question about Dual CPU systems

["jimtripp" <jimtripp@intrex.net>]

Tom,
  I have an off the shelf Dual processor. I ran the pipeline and it did not utilize both processors right away for doing one big batch. It ran ok, but just 1 cpu was pinned out, the other was idle.
  Without much programming what you could do is have 2 different batches running at the same time.
  I think there would be 3 approaches you could take in order of ease to implement.
  1) run multiple batches at once independantly of eachother
  2) play with the overall TCL code to be able to run non-independant programs at the same time. ie) run the jobs that don't require prior data in parallel.
  3) code the individual programs to handle multiple processors, and attempt to utilize them when they can. This usualy requires either like threads with a Java/C++. Or I'd suggest trying to code them in the http://www.beowulf.org/ environment. This would actually allow you to run with single or multiple processors on one machine, or tie together a bunch of smaller computers and run them in parallel. I have actually been toying with this on individual .c files from the pipeline, but do not have any good results to report.


  -Jim


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Tom Droege <tdroege2@earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 09 May 2002 12:37:15 -0500

>Now that I am running production on the data, I am thinking about how to 
>make the process go faster.  I am thinking about a dual cpu mother board.
>
>I assume that such a system does not make the pipeline run faster.  Is this 
>true?  Seems to me that the code would have to know about the available cpu 
>and this would take a lot of special code.
>
>I assume that what a second processor would buy me is the ability to 
>simultaneously work on the data while the pipeline was running at little 
>loss of power.  Is this true?
>
>Does a dual cpu system make economic sense.  I.e. are they so expensive 
>that I would be better off running two computers and getting a network 
>going to move the data around?
>
>Anyone have any recommended place to buy a dual cpu bare bones system?
>
>Tom Droege
>
>
>