On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 1:23 PM, Shimon Panfil <i...@industrialphys.com> wrote: > > Hi folks, > I'm looking for affordable workstation for heavy number crunching, not
What's "affordable" and what is "heavy number crunching"? For most large-scale scientific/engineering number-crunching physical parallelism (multiple CPUs/cores) is important for performance. Will you benefit from many more than 4 cores? Will anything more than commodity 4 core desktop be prohibitively expensive? Will you benefit / can you afford, e.g., a CUDA-based number-cruncher under your desk? > x86-64 multicore. It seems that multicore systems have problems with cooling > (physically it is pretty clear). My current amd-64 4-core machine works fine > only if less than 2 cores have 100% load. Rougly 2*100 work 20 min before > temperature becomes high, 4*100 can last couple of minuts only. Last year I > have already burned processor and do not want repeat the experience. I am guessing, but this sounds like a poorly balanced system with not enough cooling for the punch it is supposed to deliver. Emphasis on "system" as opposed to CPU/whatever. Probably needs a better box, with more power for cooling, more/better fans, improved airflow, temperature indicators and alarms? Cooling is always a problem in large-scale number-crunchers. High end systems are specifically designed with cooling (and power-consumption) per unit of performance in mind. Desktops aren't. However, there should not be any reason why a 4 core desktop could not be fully loaded without overheating, but one needs to provide the cooling, and it's a function of the enclosure. A *decent* retail computer store should be able to advise you on higher end enclosures used by heavy gamers, etc. An additional consideration is as follows. It sounds like you crunch numbers on a box under (or on top of) your desk. Assuming the computer generates much heat and is well cooled, it follows that its immediate environment - including you! - will need to dissipate the heat. Are you sure you want it? ;-) -- Oleg Goldshmidt | p...@goldshmidt.org _______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
