Let's buy GIMPS an Opteron!

[Xyzzy]

I hesitate to post this because I'm worried about the reaction it might get, but I figure let's just toss the idea out there and see what happens...

We all know that Intel and AMD do not give George anything to help him... I have personally called and written them several times with no luck and I know several other people have as well...

Now you all certainly know that I have no clue about math... My skill, and that is using the term loosely, is "making things happen"...

So here we go!

I estimate we can build a single processor Opteron system for around 700 to 800 bux... We could either have it hosted someplace or just send it to George directly... I'm willing to donate the time to assemble and test it... I'm also willing to throw 200 bucks at the fund... I have set up a Paypal fund to do this and everyone who wants to can kick in 5 bux or whatever... It even looks like Paypal works from overseas...

It is important to note that this is completely voluntary... I know George will even come into this thread and say he doesn't think this is necessary, but he's just too nice and you all know it... For all he has done for us this is, IMO, the least we can do for him...

BTW, I was thinking of using the model 140 CPU and that single processor Tyan motherboard... The other parts are just ordinary parts...

I do have a business line here and a VPN endpoint if George decides he doesn't want to pay electricity or that he doesn't have the room for it... In fact, I hope he chooses that route because I'd rather worry about keeping the system up and running so he can spend more time coding! I think it would be nice to also let other distributed computing developers use it too... But obviously, this is his decision, not mine!

Anyways, please let me know your thoughts... And please forgive me if this offends you... I really mean the best by posting this, I promise!

[Xyzzy]

Here is the donation link...

REDACTED

If for some reason this falls through I will, of course, send the mony back to the people who donate... (In fact, I will not accept the funds until we hit our goal!)

In the end I will provide complete documentation of all monies spent...

I know it is hard to trust somebody over the Internet so please do what you are comfortable with...

Thanks for your support!

[Xyzzy]

Originally Posted by Prime95

I don't need to own an Athlon64 or Opteron to some performance work. Someone on this forum could buy an Athlon64, install Linux, and give me SSH access to an account (high speed Internet access required too)

BTW, we have $200 in the fund now... :)

[Xyzzy]

$220...

[Xyzzy]

Here is Crucial's memory page for the Tyan...

http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.asp?Mfr%2BProductline=Tyan%2B&mfr=Tyan&cat=RAM&model=S2850+Tomcat+K8S&submit=Go

[Xyzzy]

$240...

[Xyzzy]

$250...

Here is the motherboard manual...

http://www.mersenneforum.org/attachm..._s2850_100.pdf

[ewmayer]

Great idea, Mike! I think a few hundred bucks for a bare-bones Opteron development system for George (and perhaps other users, e.g. "Mr. Athlon", a.k.a. Dresdenboy :)) will be money well spent.

[Xyzzy]

$270...

Here is an interesting article about how the Opteron's memory speeds are set...

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20030510180321.html

[Xyzzy]

$285...

Here is a neat page...

http://www.x86-64.org/

[Xyzzy]

$335...

[Xyzzy]

$340...

[Xyzzy]

$355...

[QuintLeo]

I'd love to help, but this is the worst possible time for me.

Just got a notice in the mail today that basically said "After your last filed Unemployment payment, you've got a little over $400 left in the account".

I also can't do Paypal - after something like 4 months of trying to get ON their web site, I gave up 'cause it locked my browser so hard I had to reboot the machine to get the browser to come back up. Every time. Repeatably. And their "tech support" kept suggesting the cure was to use Internet Exploder, which I don't ALLOW near any of my machines.


Still, I can certainly wish y'all good luck!

[Xyzzy]

$485...

[Fusion_power]

Questions...

How much memory
What size hard drive
What OS

Fusion

[Uncwilly]

Leave that to the builder and George.

Questions...

How much memory
What size hard drive
What OS

[Prime95]

Not being an AMD expert....

Would an Athlon64 system make more sense? This is the chip most end users will end up buying and it may have different memory bandwidth characteristics compared to the Opteron. It might also be a little cheaper (when it finally comes out)?

[pvillecat]

The problem with getting an athlon64 is that there are going to be 2 different types. A 939 pin dual channel and a 734(?) pin single channel. The 939 pin should be almost identical to the 940 pin Opteron. In fact the first Athlon64s are going to be 940 pins.

Rob

[Xyzzy]

$663.13...

We'll probably go with 512Mb of memory... That is the minimal configuration that takes advantage of the 128-bit memory bus... If you use only one stick of memory you end up with a 64-bit memory bus... For clarification, look at the bottom of page 18 and the top of page 19 in the manual I linked to earlier...

The hard drive will just be an ordinary IDE drive... I think anymore a 40GB drive is the smallest you can get... I tend to favor Seagate drives but lately I have been building boxes with those 8Mb cache Western Digital drives and they have worked fine...

The OS will probably be Suse Linux... There are many reasons to go with Linux over Windows... If you all want to talk about why just let me know...

We can always add more memory and stuff later... Right now our main goal is to get something up and running for as cheaply as possible without sacrificing reliability... I have a preliminary list of parts that I have selected based on reliability and bang-for-the-buck, with reliability being the prime criteria...

Obviously, if George wants something done differently we'll do whatever he wants...

The Athlon64 will probably be a bit cheaper, but I wouldn't feel comfortable buying into that solution for a few months because I like to let other people do the beta testing for me... The Opteron has been out a little while so it is easier to find documentation and stuff for... From what I have read, coding for both the Opteron and the Athlon64 will be identical so there will be no issues with compatibility...

I've received a few emails asking me why we aren't buying a dual-processor Opteron... We aren't because the cost would be quite a bit higher and because our target audience is not going to be people with dual machines... I believe we are aiming at the consumer-level single-processor Athlon64 crowd... I think we are also aiming to learn as much as we can about 64-bit programming... Yes, there have been 64-bit machines out for many years, but coding for a group of computers that makes up less than 1% of what is out there doesn't make much sense... I think (And I think quite a few of you all will agree!) that AMD is going to sell a pile of these new CPUs... I've been following the "CPU scene" since the 8086 and I can say that this, to me, is the most exciting development I've seen since the 80386...

[Xyzzy]

I just finished talking to a pal of mine via AIM and he expressed concern about us coding in Linux... Like most people, he wants a Windows client...

Just to clarify... Just because the box we are building runs Linux doesn't mean the clients will be Linux-only... I'm not much of a programmer so I won't try to explain how that works, but I'm sure somebody else can explain this...

[ColdFury]

The main computational core of the client is OS agnostic, so it doesn't matter. Only the front-end cares about the OS and that doesn't need any processor specific optimizations.

[Lumly]

Add my 20 bucks once paypal's site gets it's cc transactions back in order

[Xyzzy]

$683.13...

We're almost there!

http://www.mersenneforum.org/gif/opteronlogo.gif

[Tasuke]

my 20$ has made its journey