SpectreRF and Processor Speed

[GeorgeC]

A general question or two:

Would a SpectreRF simulation gain more from a processor of higher clock
speed
with a 1MB cache or a lower clock speed and higher cache (8MB)?

Same with running a Diva LVS?

I'm not sure how critcal a higher ecache might benefit either of these apps.

I know it's very general but anyone's experience will help.

I'm looking at the SUN440 4X1.593Ghz, 1MB vs SUN480 4X1.20Ghz, 8MB.

Thanks...George

 

[gennari]

That's not an easy question to answer. You can look for those machines in
the SPEC benchmarks, http://www.spec.org/benchmarks.html, probably the
CPU2000 results. They're probably similar performance. It depends on the
simulation size - the faster processor may be better for smaller simulation
matrices and the one with larger cache may be better for larger simulation
matrices. You also need to consider other aspects of the CPU/memory
architecture (and the price).

Frank

"GeorgeC" <gcarter@patmedia.net> wrote in message
news:1100546763.zzFNbht07fool3ITnJvgzA@teranews...

A general question or two:

Would a SpectreRF simulation gain more from a processor of higher clock
speed
with a 1MB cache or a lower clock speed and higher cache (8MB)?

Same with running a Diva LVS?

I'm not sure how critcal a higher ecache might benefit either of these
apps.

I know it's very general but anyone's experience will help.

I'm looking at the SUN440 4X1.593Ghz, 1MB vs SUN480 4X1.20Ghz, 8MB.

Thanks...George

 

[Jay Lessert]

"GeorgeC" <gcarter@patmedia.net> wrote in message news:<1100546763.zzFNbht07fool3ITnJvgzA@teranews>...

A general question or two:

Would a SpectreRF simulation gain more from a processor of higher clock
....
I'm looking at the SUN440 4X1.593Ghz, 1MB vs SUN480 4X1.20Ghz, 8MB.

Unless there's some overwhelming reason to the contrary, you would
be far better off running x86 hardware under Linux.

Preferably Opteron (don't worry about waiting for 64bit x86 versions,
just run the 32-bit lnx86 binaries).

An Opteron 248 (2.2GHz) box will run either of these two applications
about 1.5X-2X faster than the 1.2GHz USIII box. I've not benchmarked
the 1.6GHz USIIIi box; is it actually shipping?

You can buy dual-248 1U Opteron boxes for about 50% of the per-CPU price
of UltraSparc boxes, or quad-248 boxes for about 75% of the per-CPU
price (if there's some reason you really need quad-CPU boxes). You can
buy 'em from Sun, if you like, I've found the Sun x86 servers to be just
dandy so far.

Also, if you really want your Diva to run faster, replace it with
Assura; if your hierarchy is anything close to sane, you'll get
a huge speedup, and the switchover is not terribly painful.

-Jay-