Syrus Nemat-Nasser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > My research group will soon upgrade a mission-critical Debian machine > to 256M of RAM for running FPU-intensive simulations. I will get to > choose a new motherboard and CPU combo as well, but I'll be limited on > price which probably means no pentium pro. My question regards the > Tyan Tomcat III dual CPU motherboard--is this a good way to go for a > mission critical machine? What do I need to know before using a dual > CPU setup?
With 256M of RAM, more of your cost is probably going towards RAM than CPU. I'd consider going with a Pentium Pro. Make sure you get 256K or 512K of pipeline-burst cache. I am currently evaluating two dual Pentium Pro motherboards. The Tyan S1668 Titan-Pro ATX and the Intel Providence 440FX. I'm leaning towards the Tyan, but there isn't much difference. SMP Linux can sometimes lock-up when running very intensive programs. The only kernel version which I believe to run pretty stable is 2.1.29. After that, the SMP-lockup fixes are more experimental, but will eventually lead to better SMP performance. 2.1.30 to 2.1.36 can lock up. SCSI: get the Buslogic 958. 100 Mbps ethernet: some 100BaseTX ethernet cards can spam the network under intensive load. I suggest staying away from the DEC tulip-based cards. We have good luck with the Intel eepro, but the current driver takes a long time (5 to 10 minutes) to initialize. I'd also recommend getting an ATX motherboard. Check out <URL:http://www.tdl.com/~netex/>. It has some good advice on RAM, motherboards, and CPU. Dan -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
