Hi, You need fast network to parallelize across multiple nodes. 1 Gb ethernet won't work well and even even 10/40 Gb ethernet needs to be of good quality; you'd likely need to buy separate adapters, the on-board ones won't perform well. I posted some links to the list related to this a fed days ago.
The AMD FX dekstop hardware you mention is OK, but I'm not sure that it's gives the best performance/price. If you find (very) discounted Sandy Bridge-E (i7 3930K) or the cheaper Haswells like i5 4670 may actually provide better prerformance for the money. Ivy Bridge-E or Haswell-E as Mirco suggests are the best single-socket workstation options, but those are/will be pretty expensive. Finally, unless you have a good reason not to, you should not just consider GPUs, but consider what CPU/platform works best with GPUs. Cheers, -- Szilárd On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 7:01 AM, Abhishek Acharya <abhi117acha...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello gromacs users, > I am planning on investing in a beowulf cluster with 6 nodes (48 cores) each > with AMD Fx 8350 processor, 8 GB memory connected by 1 Gigabit Ethernet > switch. Although I plan to add more cores to this cluster later on, what is > the max performance expected from the current specs for a 100,000 atom > simulation box ? Also, is it better to invest in a single 48 core server ? > The cluster system can be set up at almost half the price of a 48 core > server, but do we lose out on performance in the process?? > > Regards, > > Abhishek Acharya > -- > Gromacs Users mailing list > > * Please search the archive at > http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/GMX-Users_List before posting! > > * Can't post? Read http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists > > * For (un)subscribe requests visit > https://maillist.sys.kth.se/mailman/listinfo/gromacs.org_gmx-users or send a > mail to gmx-users-requ...@gromacs.org. -- Gromacs Users mailing list * Please search the archive at http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists/GMX-Users_List before posting! * Can't post? Read http://www.gromacs.org/Support/Mailing_Lists * For (un)subscribe requests visit https://maillist.sys.kth.se/mailman/listinfo/gromacs.org_gmx-users or send a mail to gmx-users-requ...@gromacs.org.