> So if I am using a single socket motherboard, would that not be faster or does > a single CPU not cope with that amount of memory?
I am not aware of a single socket motherboard that can cope with 500GB ram. 2 socket motherboards support about 256GB (128GB per processor) or so at the moment and quad socket boards upto 1TB. You will need the 2nd CPU in order to address the memory in the 2nd banks of ram. 3rd CPU for the 3rd banks of ram etc so your extra CPUS just become memory controllers. This type of setup generates a lot of cross calls (xcalls). So, when CPU1, where your application is running, requires something from 2nd bank of memory it must request it from CPU2. These types of calls can be quite slow latency but I believe the bandwidth is no so bad. Therefore, if your memory requests are comparatively quite large you should be sitting pretty. I think this is also the same for ScaleMP. If you have many tiny memory accesses it will suck but it can be quite nice if your memory objects are large. You will probably need to spend around 15k GBP whatever you do. Ask any reputable system builder for a 500GB box and you'll probably get lots of nice offers for a Supermicro beast. If your system builder is really nice they might have a system for you to test on. Greetings from a grey Berlin. Andrew _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
