Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Per Andreas Buer]

Greetings, 

Lenz Grimmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, David Griffiths wrote:
> 
> > A 64-bit CPU won't have the 4-gig memory limit that a 32-bit processor
> > will; even worse, Linux is apparently limited to about a 2-gig process.
> 
> It depends - there is a BIGMEM patch from Andrea Arcangeli that raised
> that limit to 3.5 GB on 32bit systems. I think the patch is in the
> mainline kernel as well by now.

There is still a problem with malloc. Malloc takes a unsigned int but
the msb it discarded to safeguard against problems with signing. So,
with Arcangelis kernel-patch mysqld can safely grow up to 3.5GB but no
single buffer can grow beyound 2GB - as each buffer is allocated in one
go (at least innodb_buffer_pool - which is the one I care about).

I have not tried to remove limittation this due to lack of time and a
proper test rig. Maybe someone at MySQL might give it a go? You probably
have better "torture chambers" too. ;)


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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[KEITH COMER]

The G5 may not be all Apple says it is, but then, nothing is what it
seems when it comes to CPU's and performance tests. That said, if anyone
who wants to buy me one when they come out, I won't complain. 

Interesting article. get's a bit numberish though.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/31405.html

Keith

>>> Curtis Maurand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 06/26/03 04:03PM >>>


I'd be interested to see what happens when MySQL gets run on a G5.  
SPECint and SPECfp numbers look very good.  there is an 8GB RAM limit
on 
it, though.

Curtis

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Jeremy Zawodny wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 05:37:24PM -0400, Curtis Maurand wrote:
> > 
> > Linux compiled on an opteron and targeted for it will lose the
2-gig 
> > process limit.  the 2-gig number is based on a 32 bit integer.  You
now 
> > would a have 64 bit integer (5 Quintillion as an unsigned integer.
:-)).
> > 
> > Imagine the 10GB database in memory, plus the temp and heap tables
and the 
> > indexes.  Lets not forget about the ability to have large heap
tables, 
> > too.  Life gets very interesting in the 64 bit space, especially
since 
> > IA64's aren't exactly plentiful.  As soon as I can afford one, I'm
buying 
> > one.  I'm very interesting.
> 
> Yeah, the operton should kick major ass with MySQL and sufficient
> memory. :-)
> 
> Jeremy
> 

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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Curtis Maurand]

I'd be interested to see what happens when MySQL gets run on a G5.  
SPECint and SPECfp numbers look very good.  there is an 8GB RAM limit on 
it, though.

Curtis

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Jeremy Zawodny wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 05:37:24PM -0400, Curtis Maurand wrote:
> > 
> > Linux compiled on an opteron and targeted for it will lose the 2-gig 
> > process limit.  the 2-gig number is based on a 32 bit integer.  You now 
> > would a have 64 bit integer (5 Quintillion as an unsigned integer. :-)).
> > 
> > Imagine the 10GB database in memory, plus the temp and heap tables and the 
> > indexes.  Lets not forget about the ability to have large heap tables, 
> > too.  Life gets very interesting in the 64 bit space, especially since 
> > IA64's aren't exactly plentiful.  As soon as I can afford one, I'm buying 
> > one.  I'm very interesting.
> 
> Yeah, the operton should kick major ass with MySQL and sufficient
> memory. :-)
> 
> Jeremy
> 

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RE: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[David Brodbeck]

> -Original Message-
> From: Lenz Grimmer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> Actually, you can create larger files on 32bit Linux systems 
> as well. It's
> just that the file system and the C library must have support for LFS
> (Large File Support):
> 
> http://www.suse.de/~aj/linux_lfs.html

I can confirm this.  I've been able to create files bigger than 2 gigs on
ext2fs for quite a while now.

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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Lenz Grimmer]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hi,

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, David Griffiths wrote:

> I'm surprised there is not more interest in this; is it that not many
> work with large-ish (10+ gig) databases that need high-end performance?

Many of our customers do.

> A 64-bit CPU won't have the 4-gig memory limit that a 32-bit processor
> will; even worse, Linux is apparently limited to about a 2-gig process.

It depends - there is a BIGMEM patch from Andrea Arcangeli that raised
that limit to 3.5 GB on 32bit systems. I think the patch is in the
mainline kernel as well by now.

> SuSe Enterprise Linux supports 512-gigabyte processes with 16
> processors. Imagine 10 gigabyte database all in memory.
>
> Even better, larger file sizes - no more 2-gig files. Max file size is
> 9-Exabytes ( "9" followed by 18 "0's" ). All the posts I see about
> people trying to get around the 2 gig file limit should be really
> excitied.

Actually, you can create larger files on 32bit Linux systems as well. It's
just that the file system and the C library must have support for LFS
(Large File Support):

http://www.suse.de/~aj/linux_lfs.html

> I guess I'm just surprised by lack of interest. I've been bugging our
> CTO once a week about this, and hopefully should have a server on my
> desk by mid summer to late fall.

Have fun with it!

> If you're interested, SuSe has a good PDF on AMD64 and SuSe Enterprise Linux
> 1.0:
>
> http://www.suse.com/en/business/products/server/sles/misc/sles8_amd64.pdf
>
> Anyone have some practical experience with the software and hardware?

Yes, we do have two AMD64 systems (one dual Opteron with 1GB of RAM),
running SLES here. Quite impressive. We also have some Itanium (1/2)
systems and SGI kindly gave us access to an "Altix" system (16 x 900MHz
Intel Itanium-2, 32GB of RAM). So MySQL runs quite happily on 64bit
systems.

The main benefit of a 64 bit platform is that MySQL can handle more
concurrent threads and that you can give more than 4GB of memory to MySQL
buffers.

The disadvantage is that MySQL will be about 3-5 % slower because of the
extra memory usage 64 bit pointers require (Structures are aligned to be
64 bit aligned, which makes the structures bigger and reduces the CPU
cache usage, more stack space is used for registers). We tested this on
Sun Solaris, using the Sun Forte compilers, but I assume this applies to
other architectures as well.

Bye,
LenZ
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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Jeremy Zawodny]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 05:37:24PM -0400, Curtis Maurand wrote:
> 
> Linux compiled on an opteron and targeted for it will lose the 2-gig 
> process limit.  the 2-gig number is based on a 32 bit integer.  You now 
> would a have 64 bit integer (5 Quintillion as an unsigned integer. :-)).
> 
> Imagine the 10GB database in memory, plus the temp and heap tables and the 
> indexes.  Lets not forget about the ability to have large heap tables, 
> too.  Life gets very interesting in the 64 bit space, especially since 
> IA64's aren't exactly plentiful.  As soon as I can afford one, I'm buying 
> one.  I'm very interesting.

Yeah, the operton should kick major ass with MySQL and sufficient
memory. :-)

Jeremy
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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Curtis Maurand]

Linux compiled on an opteron and targeted for it will lose the 2-gig 
process limit.  the 2-gig number is based on a 32 bit integer.  You now 
would a have 64 bit integer (5 Quintillion as an unsigned integer. :-)).

Imagine the 10GB database in memory, plus the temp and heap tables and the 
indexes.  Lets not forget about the ability to have large heap tables, 
too.  Life gets very interesting in the 64 bit space, especially since 
IA64's aren't exactly plentiful.  As soon as I can afford one, I'm buying 
one.  I'm very interesting.

Curtis


On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, David Griffiths wrote:

> I'm surprised there is not more interest in this; is it that not many work
> with large-ish (10+ gig) databases that need high-end performance?
> 
> A 64-bit CPU won't have the 4-gig memory limit that a 32-bit processor will;
> even worse, Linux is apparently limited to about a 2-gig process.
> 
> SuSe Enterprise Linux supports 512-gigabyte processes with 16 processors.
> Imagine 10 gigabyte database all in memory.
> 
> Even better, larger file sizes - no more 2-gig files. Max file size is
> 9-Exabytes ( "9" followed by 18 "0's" ). All the posts I see about people
> trying to get around the 2 gig file limit should be really excitied.
> 
> I guess I'm just surprised by lack of interest. I've been bugging our CTO
> once a week about this, and hopefully should have a server on my desk by mid
> summer to late fall.
> 
> If you're interested, SuSe has a good PDF on AMD64 and SuSe Enterprise Linux
> 1.0:
> 
> http://www.suse.com/en/business/products/server/sles/misc/sles8_amd64.pdf
> 
> 
> Anyone have some practical experience with the software and hardware?
> 
> David.
> 
> 

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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Mike Wexler]

Michael Conlen wrote:

64 bit servers have different performance characteristics and tend to 
be used for different things. than PC systems. They are generally 
backplanes to which are attached some number of processors and some 
amount of memory, and a lot of IO. They aren't used as much for 
processor speed (you could get a bunch of PCs to do that) as they are 
for doing a lot of IO. Even a small server like the old Sun e450's (4 
processors) had something like 6 or 8 PCI busses on them. Larger 
systems could be configured with a large number of IO cards for those 
computers that just need a few gigabit per second of network IO and a 
ton of disk space (multiple disk controllers, or FC controllers all 
going full speed). 
I think you are definitely overgeneralizing here. I used DEC Alpha's 
back when they were in Alpha testing and I've also used several machines 
with the MIPs chip in them. Not all 64 bit machines are of the sort you 
describe. I've had several different 64 bit machines on my desktop.

As far as mysql is concerned, there is definitely a market for cheap 
machines with >4GB of memory in one process. My DB server currently is 
an x86 system with 4GB of memory. I guarantee that having twice as much 
RAM and having it usable by the MySQL process would be a big win. And an 
opteron system with a 64 bit processor is roughly the same price as an 
Intel system configured similiarly. Where as similar machines from 
companies like Sun, HP or IBM are definitely much more pricey.

I do understand if you want terabytes of disk and very wide I/O buses 
that costs more no matter what CPU you have. But its also true that 
given a particular requirement for CPU, I/O and memory, if an Intel 
system with relatively stock parts can handle it, it will be cheaper due 
to the economics of scale and the amount of competition in that 
marketplace.



You would use the memory to store temp information as a query would 
run and you rely on the systems fast access to the disks to scan 
through the tables. You would generally attach anywhere from a few 
hundred gigs of disk (spread out over many smaller disks) up to many 
terabytes (it's been a while since I've done large system admin work, 
so I have no idea what the largest systems are doing, but imagine 72" 
cabinets full of 72 GB or larger disks). This way instead of getting 
speed from caching the data you get speed by reading the data off the 
disks quickly.

64 bit workstations had an advantage over PC systems most of the time 
in that the memory bus was not the bottleneck it can be on the PC 
avoiding delays due to cache misses, which made them great for 
visualization workstations where the system had to scan through a lot 
of memory quickly to generate an image or process scientific data.

There's a lot of other things going back to the fact that Digital, HP 
Sun and IBM have always had a head start on superscalar and multi-core 
CPU designs, so comparing Mz was never even close between two 
processors. On the other hand many people never saw that advantage 
because they would compile with gcc which was never the best choice 
for pure speed on a given processor.

If you need a 64 bit processor for memory and file size concerns and 
can sacrifice some of the processing speed (which often goes away 
because of the faster IO) there's always been a good used market, in 
particular for Sun equipment. I've seen some dirt cheap prices on 
fully loaded Sun E450 systems which are very nice for their size. I 
think they hold 20 disks internally and there's PCI slots for a lot 
more if you need large files.

On the other hand I think "need 64 bit" and "affordable" are rare 
situations.

--
Michael Conlen
Mike Wexler wrote:

Not necessarily. People that need relatively affordable 64 bit 
systems may be waiting for the Opteron to stabilize. My experience is 
the Wintel solutions (like Opteron) tend to have at least a 2-1 price 
performance over Sun and Dec. Also, given that HP has basically 
dropped Alpha, I don't think a lot of people are likely to be 
implementing that platform.

Dan Nelson wrote:

In the last episode (Jun 24), David Griffiths said:
 

I'm surprised there is not more interest in this; is it that not many
work with large-ish (10+ gig) databases that need high-end
performance?
  


I think we have a mysql database running on Tru64, and I'm sure it runs
great on Solaris.  My guess is the people that needed over 2gb of RAM
have switched to 64-bit CPUs long ago.
 







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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Jeremy Zawodny]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2003 at 01:25:25PM -0700, Gabriel Guzman wrote:
> 
> not exactly relevant to this discussion but... Apple did just release
> the new G5, 64bit PowerMacs.  Could be another alternative for the
> inexpensive 64bit market.  Granted, they don't ship until august, but
> they are nice to look at:
> 
> http://www.apple.com/powermac/
> 
> from their site: 
> 
> The Power Mac G5 is the world's fastest personal computer and the first
> with a 64-bit processor - which means it breaks the 4 gigabyte barrier
> and can use up to 8 gigabytes of main memory. The new G5 processor -
> available at speeds up to dual 2GHz with a new ultrahigh-bandwidth
> system architecture featuring AGP 8X and PCI-X - makes the Power Mac G5
> a breakthrough in desktop processing power. And models start at just
> $1999.

Strangely, I didn't see an Xserve models with the G5 announced yet.

Did I miss that?
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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Gabriel Guzman]

not exactly relevant to this discussion but... Apple did just release
the new G5, 64bit PowerMacs.  Could be another alternative for the
inexpensive 64bit market.  Granted, they don't ship until august, but
they are nice to look at:

http://www.apple.com/powermac/

from their site: 

The Power Mac G5 is the world’s fastest personal computer and the first
with a 64-bit processor — which means it breaks the 4 gigabyte barrier
and can use up to 8 gigabytes of main memory. The new G5 processor —
available at speeds up to dual 2GHz with a new ultrahigh-bandwidth
system architecture featuring AGP 8X and PCI-X — makes the Power Mac G5
a breakthrough in desktop processing power. And models start at just
$1999.




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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Michael Conlen]

64 bit servers have different performance characteristics and tend to be 
used for different things. than PC systems. They are generally 
backplanes to which are attached some number of processors and some 
amount of memory, and a lot of IO. They aren't used as much for 
processor speed (you could get a bunch of PCs to do that) as they are 
for doing a lot of IO. Even a small server like the old Sun e450's (4 
processors) had something like 6 or 8 PCI busses on them. Larger systems 
could be configured with a large number of IO cards for those computers 
that just need a few gigabit per second of network IO and a ton of disk 
space (multiple disk controllers, or FC controllers all going full speed).

You would use the memory to store temp information as a query would run 
and you rely on the systems fast access to the disks to scan through the 
tables. You would generally attach anywhere from a few hundred gigs of 
disk (spread out over many smaller disks) up to many terabytes (it's 
been a while since I've done large system admin work, so I have no idea 
what the largest systems are doing, but imagine 72" cabinets full of 72 
GB or larger disks). This way instead of getting speed from caching the 
data you get speed by reading the data off the disks quickly.

64 bit workstations had an advantage over PC systems most of the time in 
that the memory bus was not the bottleneck it can be on the PC avoiding 
delays due to cache misses, which made them great for visualization 
workstations where the system had to scan through a lot of memory 
quickly to generate an image or process scientific data.

There's a lot of other things going back to the fact that Digital, HP 
Sun and IBM have always had a head start on superscalar and multi-core 
CPU designs, so comparing Mz was never even close between two 
processors. On the other hand many people never saw that advantage 
because they would compile with gcc which was never the best choice for 
pure speed on a given processor.

If you need a 64 bit processor for memory and file size concerns and can 
sacrifice some of the processing speed (which often goes away because of 
the faster IO) there's always been a good used market, in particular for 
Sun equipment. I've seen some dirt cheap prices on fully loaded Sun E450 
systems which are very nice for their size. I think they hold 20 disks 
internally and there's PCI slots for a lot more if you need large files.

On the other hand I think "need 64 bit" and "affordable" are rare 
situations.

--
Michael Conlen
Mike Wexler wrote:

Not necessarily. People that need relatively affordable 64 bit systems 
may be waiting for the Opteron to stabilize. My experience is the 
Wintel solutions (like Opteron) tend to have at least a 2-1 price 
performance over Sun and Dec. Also, given that HP has basically 
dropped Alpha, I don't think a lot of people are likely to be 
implementing that platform.

Dan Nelson wrote:

In the last episode (Jun 24), David Griffiths said:
 

I'm surprised there is not more interest in this; is it that not many
work with large-ish (10+ gig) databases that need high-end
performance?
  


I think we have a mysql database running on Tru64, and I'm sure it runs
great on Solaris.  My guess is the people that needed over 2gb of RAM
have switched to 64-bit CPUs long ago.
 







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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Mike Wexler]

Not necessarily. People that need relatively affordable 64 bit systems 
may be waiting for the Opteron to stabilize. My experience is the Wintel 
solutions (like Opteron) tend to have at least a 2-1 price performance 
over Sun and Dec. Also, given that HP has basically dropped Alpha, I 
don't think a lot of people are likely to be implementing that platform.

Dan Nelson wrote:

In the last episode (Jun 24), David Griffiths said:
 

I'm surprised there is not more interest in this; is it that not many
work with large-ish (10+ gig) databases that need high-end
performance?
   

I think we have a mysql database running on Tru64, and I'm sure it runs
great on Solaris.  My guess is the people that needed over 2gb of RAM
have switched to 64-bit CPUs long ago.
 



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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Mark Matthews]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

David Griffiths wrote:

> I'm surprised there is not more interest in this; is it that not many work
> with large-ish (10+ gig) databases that need high-end performance?
>
> A 64-bit CPU won't have the 4-gig memory limit that a 32-bit processor
will;
> even worse, Linux is apparently limited to about a 2-gig process.
>
> SuSe Enterprise Linux supports 512-gigabyte processes with 16 processors.
> Imagine 10 gigabyte database all in memory.
>
> Even better, larger file sizes - no more 2-gig files. Max file size is
> 9-Exabytes ( "9" followed by 18 "0's" ). All the posts I see about people
> trying to get around the 2 gig file limit should be really excitied.
>
> I guess I'm just surprised by lack of interest. I've been bugging our CTO
> once a week about this, and hopefully should have a server on my desk
by mid
> summer to late fall.
[snip]

I suppose this might be stating the obvious, but you did see our Opteron
binary for Linux at http://www.mysql.com/downloads/mysql-4.0.html
(listed as AMD 64), didn't you? :)

-Mark


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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[David Griffiths]

Excellent point. How does MySQL run on Tru64? Any familiarity with it on
Intel32?

But there are some big drawbacks to these platforms:

- they only run apps that have been specifically ported and compiled for
them. The Opteron runs the same 32-bit code that an Athalon or Pentium class
computer will run. Ports aren't always available, and they can lag behind
w/regards to the versions available. Ports can be buggier as well.

- Those systems are expensive. Opteron hardware is relatively cheap ($1000
for a motherboard and two processors), and much of the hardware is generic
(no super-expensive RAM from Sun). Because the hardware is generic, you have
more options at a lower price point. I'm not sure how a 32-bit IDE RAID
driver would do in a 64-bit version of Linux. If a 64-bit driver is needed,
then there might be some issues.

- This is new hardware. People who work with computers like new toys. They
like to set them up, test them, and then tell everyone what they thought.

Anyway, hopefully someone will have some insight.

David

- Original Message -
From: "Dan Nelson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "David Griffiths" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 12:09 PM
Subject: Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?


> In the last episode (Jun 24), David Griffiths said:
> > I'm surprised there is not more interest in this; is it that not many
> > work with large-ish (10+ gig) databases that need high-end
> > performance?
>
> I think we have a mysql database running on Tru64, and I'm sure it runs
> great on Solaris.  My guess is the people that needed over 2gb of RAM
> have switched to 64-bit CPUs long ago.
>
> --
> Dan Nelson
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>

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Re: Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Jun 24), David Griffiths said:
> I'm surprised there is not more interest in this; is it that not many
> work with large-ish (10+ gig) databases that need high-end
> performance?

I think we have a mysql database running on Tru64, and I'm sure it runs
great on Solaris.  My guess is the people that needed over 2gb of RAM
have switched to 64-bit CPUs long ago.

-- 
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Anyone had a chance to try an Opteron yet?

[David Griffiths]

I'm surprised there is not more interest in this; is it that not many work
with large-ish (10+ gig) databases that need high-end performance?

A 64-bit CPU won't have the 4-gig memory limit that a 32-bit processor will;
even worse, Linux is apparently limited to about a 2-gig process.

SuSe Enterprise Linux supports 512-gigabyte processes with 16 processors.
Imagine 10 gigabyte database all in memory.

Even better, larger file sizes - no more 2-gig files. Max file size is
9-Exabytes ( "9" followed by 18 "0's" ). All the posts I see about people
trying to get around the 2 gig file limit should be really excitied.

I guess I'm just surprised by lack of interest. I've been bugging our CTO
once a week about this, and hopefully should have a server on my desk by mid
summer to late fall.

If you're interested, SuSe has a good PDF on AMD64 and SuSe Enterprise Linux
1.0:

http://www.suse.com/en/business/products/server/sles/misc/sles8_amd64.pdf


Anyone have some practical experience with the software and hardware?

David.

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