Bang for the Buck, comparing Celerons to Xeons (and PIIIs?)

[George Bonser]

On 13-Sep-99 Alan DuBoff wrote:
> George Bonser wrote:
> 
>> You are seeing the benefit of SMP. By specifying -j4 I am able to use both
>> processors.
> 
> This has been very educational for me, since you really can't specify that
> type of parameter on Solaris. Solaris really controls the processors itself,
> but this would imply that Linux doesn't have the same amount of control. I've
> been getting mixed results with -j2, -j4, and -j6, but as you mention, -j4
> seems to be a decent happy medium with no benifit really seen with 6.

Actually, if you run GNU make, it should not matter which OS you use. It is
simply specifying how many simultanious processes make will kick off, it is up
to the OS in all cases to schedule the processes. If you are using Sun's tools,
they may not allow you to specify this or they may have different syntax for it.

It has been a while since I used their devel toolkit and I never used it on SMP
machines.

>> kernels while Linus is away. They will likely sync up in the pre-2.3.19
>> series
>> when he gets back.
> 
> I don't hang out much on the kernel list, just happened to notice the post on
> Freshmeat this past friday.

Yeah, that is a problem. People see these postings on Freshmeat and think it is
ready to use ... it really isn't. The only thing that was announced was a
FEATURE freeze. There are still a lot of things to clean up/fix before release.
There just will not be any additional features (reiserfs will not likely make
it, etc).

> I like the design of the SuperMicro cases, they use this architecture, with
> the 2 fans pre-installed in the case, the exaust on top, and one over the
> CPUs
> on the bottom.

That is how I have the Antech case I bought from Fry's set up ... Two fans
above the PS in the top rear exhausting all the time and a "booster" intake fan
at the bottom front controlled by the mobo.

> the 2 for the processors, there is only one left which I use for the one fan
> over the CPUs.

That is pretty standard ... three fan connectors. Anything more is a blessing,
I hate the in-line fan connectors that go in the disk drive power connectors.
They increase the potential for high-resistance contacts and voltage drops to
the disk drives and might cause intermittant problems that are difficult to
troubleshoot. I would rather run all fans on a dedicated circuit but many power
supplies are short on connectors.

> I have some code I've run on Solaris x86, a program called health and it will
> tell you the temp. of the CPUs. I was trying to find that for Linux, I know
> it
> originally came from Linux, but have been a hard time finding it. I'm not
> sure
> if the ABit mobo has the proper chipset on it to give the temps for the CPUs.
> Have you heard of health?

There is the lmsensors stuff, you might have a look into it.

> My take is that we really need to move to the 2.3/2.4 kernel to get the
> better
> SMP advantage. 2.2.x seems to be a stop gap in between, but 2.3/2.4 should be
> able to compete with some of the other SMP systems, like Solaris x86 and/or
> even FreeBSD.

2.2 has some problems, I am not surprised to see it go quickly. There is a lot
of network cleanup that needs to be done too.

> Do you know of a program that will monitor both CPUs? I would like something
> like top, but that supports both processors. Do you know of anything
> available?

The latest top should work.


E-Mail: George Bonser <grep@shorelink.com>
Date: 12-Sep-99
Time: 23:27:16

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