platform for number crunching

[Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 4:29 PM, Oleg Goldshmidt <pub at goldshmidt.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 1:23 PM, Shimon Panfil <info at industrialphys.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Hi folks,
> > I'm looking for affordable workstation for heavy number crunching, not
>
> What's "affordable" and what is "heavy number crunching"?
>
> For most large-scale scientific/engineering number-crunching physical
> parallelism (multiple CPUs/cores) is important for performance. Will
> you benefit from many more than 4 cores? Will anything more than
> commodity 4 core desktop be prohibitively expensive? Will you benefit
> / can you afford, e.g., a CUDA-based number-cruncher under your desk?
>
>
Note that while a CPU consumes around 100W at highest P-state (core voltage
and frequency), based for example on opteron specifications, GPGPUs consume
around 300W and even more when active. If the current box has a problem with
dissipating heat, it will not take a GPGPU.

Furthermore, switching to GPGPU programming has a huge cost in labor. For
this specific case, in which Shimon is a consultant, my assumption is that
he works with a different piece of software every time, he will not have a
chance to enjoy the fruit of his labor.


-- 
Orna Agmon Ben-Yehuda.
http://ladypine.org
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