Let's buy GIMPS an Opteron! - Page 3

Wacky · 2003-08-17, 23:44

I disagree. You shouldn't use any "free" components. If your mother wants to contribute the HD, then give her credit for the "fair" value as both a contribution and an expense. I suggest that US$1/GB is a fair value. (You certainly could not purchase a drive for less than $15).

QuintLeo · 2003-08-18, 02:51

I've SEEN Registered DDR333 from at least a couple places - and I think I remember seeing registered DDR400 from one somewhere.

Also, the Opteron does NOT access it's RAM via the Hypertransport links - it's got an on-CPU memory controller, and accesses the RAM directly - which is most of the reason it needs so many pins on the CPU. The Athlon-64 will be the same way, but the 754-pin version will only have a single memory controller channel, as opposed to 2 of them on the Opteron and the "939/940 pin Athlon-64" versions.

Xyzzy · 2003-08-18, 12:59

$805.13 in donations... $249.63 spent...

I just ordered the memory...

http://www.ec.kingston.com/shop/partsinfo.asp?ktcpartno=KVR333X72RC25/256

Two sticks cost us $162.64 with free shipping...

We got lucky and got PC2700 for just about the same cost as PC2100...

Like I mentioned earlier, I usually buy from Crucial, but I have ordered from Kingston quite a bit in the past... Both are reputable vendors...

(Boy these PC1600/2100/2700 numbers are awkward! I much prefer DDR200/266/333!)

Xyzzy · 2003-08-18, 17:48

$895.13 in donations... $476.33 spent... $418.80 left...

I just ordered the motherboard... It cost us $226.70 delivered...

Newegg just got in the 142 CPU ($320) today so hopefully they will get the 140 in soon...

All we need is the CPU now... There honestly isn't any reason to get a faster CPU than the 140... I'm not sure how to explain that, but Wackerbath and I discussed it this weekend and it made sense when he explained it to me...

We will have a bit of money left over... There are a lot of things we can do with the extra money... We could refund a percentage back to everybodyor we could buy more stuff or we could set the money aside for another project in the future... To be honest, I didn't expect to get in more donations than we needed so I never planned for this. (I don't think we need to buy any more stuff, either!)

Ideas would be appreciated!

outlnder · 2003-08-18, 18:48

If there is enough left over to buy the 142, get it.

sdbardwick · 2003-08-18, 19:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by outlnder

If there is enough left over to buy the 142, get it.

Agreed.

While giving back a percentage of the fund raising efforts nice, distributing approx. $100 among all of the contributors seems like a lot of effort for little return [speaking for myself only of course]; I'd be happy using the surplus to buy George whatever supplies, media, etc. he might need.

eepiccolo · 2003-08-18, 19:13

You could use any leftover money to fund those google ads. Perhaps increase the daily budget.

Xyzzy · 2003-08-18, 19:24

The Google ads aren't working out because we never get enough click-thrus to keep them active...

Hopefully someone real up-to-speed with this kind of development will chime in here soon with an explanation of why we don't need a faster processor... Although, even if we did get the 142 we'd have $100 or so left over...

I'd think adding more memory would be better but the research I've done indicates that our 512MB will be more than sufficient...

One possibility might be upgrading George's home boxes so he can get more work done... Maybe he needs a CPU or memory upgrade? Or maybe some more memory? Or a trip to the Bahamas? :)

eepiccolo · 2003-08-18, 19:36

How about "instant" cash to whoever finds the next Mersenne prime? Something to tide them over until potentially GIMPS finds a 10M prime and distributes the EFF cash.

When I say "instant," I means after our cult leaders confirm the prime.

(ooh, did I just open that can of worms again?

)

Wacky · 2003-08-18, 19:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

... George ... Maybe he needs ... a trip to the Bahamas? :)

If he can get a trip to the Bahamas for the $100, it must be one of those high pressure sell you a condo trips. NOT going would be better for his mental health.

I think the best thing to do at this point is "ask George". His suggestions should carry quite a bit of weight now that we have reached the threshold of a minimal working system.

Prime95 · 2003-08-18, 21:38

I'd vote to keep it in reserve. For now, Xyzzy is going to host the computer and I'm sure anyone who wants to do some Opteron programming - GIMPS or otherwise - is welcome to use it. I don't think long distance development will be too troublesome.

I can imagine this Opteron could become a backup primenet server. In that case, the money could be used to upgrade to raid drives, more memory, whatever.

outlnder · 2003-08-18, 21:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

Hopefully someone real up-to-speed with this kind of development will chime in here soon with an explanation of why we don't need a faster processor... Although, even if we did get the 142 we'd have $100 or so left over...

Since the box will be crunching Prime95 anyway, why not get the best bang for the buck??

The question would be, "Who gets the credit for this box?"

Xyzzy · 2003-08-19, 05:25

I figure George will want to run it long term to get an idea about stability...

Joe O · 2003-08-19, 14:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xyzzy

$895.13 in donations... $476.33 spent... $418.80 left...
Newegg just got in the 142 CPU ($320) today so hopefully they will get the 140 in soon...
All we need is the CPU now... There honestly isn't any reason to get a faster CPU than the 140... I'm not sure how to explain that, but Wackerbath and I discussed it this weekend and it made sense when he explained it to me...
Ideas would be appreciated!

Faster CPU means faster compiles!
Faster compiles means faster development!
Faster development means more development!
More development means faster PRIME95!

The faster CPU is here. The slower one is not. If it doesn't come in before the MB is shipped go for what is here. The sooner you have the parts the sooner there will be a machine. The sooner there will be a machine the sooner the development will start.

Strike while the iron is hot!

Dresdenboy · 2003-08-19, 15:56

Just stumbled over this thread ;)

That's a very good idea to provide a development opteron! BTW I created a sourceforge project (http://optimizer.sourceforge.net/ - click on SF logo for the SF project page) for having a place for all AMD64 optimizers out there. I've already put some tasks into the task list. In the documentation part on the project page I put some links to helpful documents and tools.

One interesting question for Prime95 development will be which OS and tools should be used. Currently it relies on masm and VC. There is a Win XP 64bit beta out.

I will try to change currently available FFT algorithms to fit best to the AMD64 hardware (special prefetch methods, mem access patterns and so on).

DDB

Edit: It would be nice to have GCC 3.3 and maybe also 3.4 on that Opteron. SF only has 3.2 without SSE2 intrinsics. So I wouldn't need to use a cross compiler all the time ;)

Xyzzy · 2003-08-19, 19:06

$895.13 in donations... $748.33 spent... $146.80 left...

I just ordered the CPU... Newegg got them in this morning... Unfortunately they aren't as cheap as I expected, but they are still priced reasonably... It cost us $272 with free shipping...

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=19-103-403&depa=1

It looks like we came in right in the middle of our predicted cost of 700-800 bux...

There is a good chance we will get the CPU delivered on Friday and then the box can be completed over the weekend so we can begin using it next week!

QuintLeo · 2003-08-20, 07:03

64-bit LINUX already exists, from SuSE as a minimum (and therefore likely soon for ALL the major distributions).

Unfortunately, there are a LOT more Windows systems around - *BUT* - I suspect that there will be more LINUX-based Opteron systems for a while than Windows-based ones. MIght change in a couple months if the Athlon64 ramps up production and sales fast enough, but I wouldn't BET on that...

Dresdenboy · 2003-08-20, 09:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by clowns789

Looks like Opterons are pretty slow, and besides, you don't want a lot of them just piled up in the garage. Obviously you can't get a Cray, but I found an alternative.

They scale nicely. And where are they "pretty slow"? It just depends on the application. In general they do fine, in special cases (DB, HPC clusters etc.) they do very well and in other areas (like P4 optimized content creation) sometimes suboptimal. Some people decide on max. speed with one CPU using a certain App. Other decide on performance/Watt or price/performance or scaleability.

Let me point you to this comparison of 2.2 and 2.25GHz Opteron vs. AXP 3200+ and P4C 3.2GHz:
http://www.amdzone.com/articleview.cfm?ArticleID=1329

Dresdenboy · 2003-08-20, 10:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prime95

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)?

Both have the same core and 1MB L2. There will be dual channel and single channel versions of Athlon 64 and with different number of activated Hypertransport links. But the 14x Opterons have one HT link like Athlon 64.

You are right that the smaller Athlon 64's (with 754 pins) will have different membandwidth characteristics. But we could simulate that on Opteron by using only one channel if necessary.

Dresdenboy · 2003-08-20, 10:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by QuintLeo

64-bit LINUX already exists, from SuSE as a minimum (and therefore likely soon for ALL the major distributions).

Unfortunately, there are a LOT more Windows systems around - *BUT* - I suspect that there will be more LINUX-based Opteron systems for a while than Windows-based ones. MIght change in a couple months if the Athlon64 ramps up production and sales fast enough, but I wouldn't BET on that...

There are also distributions from RedHat, Mandrake and Debian as I know.

Besides the OS the interesting part will be the installed compilers.

gbvalor · 2003-08-20, 11:11

Hi,

I was out and didn't read this thread :).

Thanks to Dresdenboy to point me here. Well, I've also sent some bucks.

And please, install a Linux SO at the moment.

Guillermo

trif · 2003-08-20, 12:00

Since the bits that do the real work are in assembler, choice of compiler and platform is not critical at this point. I don't think doing dev work on a beta OS (64-bit Windows) is a really good idea. Finding a compiler to compile for 64 bit Windows might be a challenge, since we really aren't going to want to pop for a Windows OS just to do a compile.

Dresdenboy · 2003-08-20, 12:15

It depends, what the used assembler understands. For example if it's MASM style it wouldn't be useful using AS. The used compiler is also interesting because of support for certain language extensions and the used GCC version should at least understand SSE2 assembler and intrinsics.

I think 64bit compilers for 64bit Windows are also beta (at least regarding AMD64).

Using MinGW or Cygwin it is maybe even possible to create the 64bit Windows version using GCC. Here it is at least not important to have the compiler which creates the fastest code.

Dresdenboy · 2003-08-20, 13:06

Regarding memory bandwidth and Opteron:
There is a nice japanese article about Opteron performance:
http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/special/2003/opteron/
(Translation: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babel...n%2Findex.html)

One interesting image of the benchmarks:
ScienceMark 2.0 double precision matrix multiply results:
http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/special/200...images/g08.gif
Some extract:
[code:1]Opteron 240 (1.4GHz), single CPU in 32bit mode (SC=single channel, DC=dual channel) coded in assembler:
SSE2 scalar MFLOPS (SC/DC): 1887 / 1922 (+1.9%)
SSE2 packed MFLOPS (SC/DC): 1915 / 1947 (+1.7%)
x87 MFLOPS (SC/DC): 1949 / 1981 (+1.6%)

P4/3GHz for comparison MFLOPS (DC): 1084, 2776, 1843.[/code:1]The Opterons had registered PC2100 CL2.5 single and dual channel, the P4 got dual channel PC3200 CL2.5 on a D875PBZ board.

Xyzzy · 2003-08-20, 17:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dresdenboy

There are also distributions from RedHat, Mandrake and Debian as I know.

The RH one is for the Itanium... AFAIK they don't have an Opteron version out yet...

http://www.redhat.com/software/itanium/

Here is Debian's IA-64 page...

http://www.debian.org/ports/ia64/

Here is Suse's page...

http://www.suse.de/us/business/products/server/sles/amd64.html

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2003-08-17, 23:44	#51
Wacky Jun 2003 The Texas Hill Country 3²×11² Posts	I disagree. You shouldn't use any "free" components. If your mother wants to contribute the HD, then give her credit for the "fair" value as both a contribution and an expense. I suggest that US$1/GB is a fair value. (You certainly could not purchase a drive for less than $15).

2003-08-18, 02:51	#52
QuintLeo Oct 2002 Lost in the hills of Iowa 2⁶×7 Posts	I've SEEN Registered DDR333 from at least a couple places - and I think I remember seeing registered DDR400 from one somewhere. Also, the Opteron does NOT access it's RAM via the Hypertransport links - it's got an on-CPU memory controller, and accesses the RAM directly - which is most of the reason it needs so many pins on the CPU. The Athlon-64 will be the same way, but the 754-pin version will only have a single memory controller channel, as opposed to 2 of them on the Opteron and the "939/940 pin Athlon-64" versions.

2003-08-18, 12:59	#53
Xyzzy "Mike" Aug 2002 2035₁₆ Posts	$805.13 in donations... $249.63 spent... I just ordered the memory... http://www.ec.kingston.com/shop/partsinfo.asp?ktcpartno=KVR333X72RC25/256 Two sticks cost us $162.64 with free shipping... We got lucky and got PC2700 for just about the same cost as PC2100... Like I mentioned earlier, I usually buy from Crucial, but I have ordered from Kingston quite a bit in the past... Both are reputable vendors... (Boy these PC1600/2100/2700 numbers are awkward! I much prefer DDR200/266/333!)

2003-08-18, 17:48	#54
Xyzzy "Mike" Aug 2002 10000000110101₂ Posts	$895.13 in donations... $476.33 spent... $418.80 left... I just ordered the motherboard... It cost us $226.70 delivered... Newegg just got in the 142 CPU ($320) today so hopefully they will get the 140 in soon... All we need is the CPU now... There honestly isn't any reason to get a faster CPU than the 140... I'm not sure how to explain that, but Wackerbath and I discussed it this weekend and it made sense when he explained it to me... We will have a bit of money left over... There are a lot of things we can do with the extra money... We could refund a percentage back to everybodyor we could buy more stuff or we could set the money aside for another project in the future... To be honest, I didn't expect to get in more donations than we needed so I never planned for this. (I don't think we need to buy any more stuff, either!) Ideas would be appreciated!

2003-08-18, 18:48	#55
outlnder Aug 2002 2·3·53 Posts	If there is enough left over to buy the 142, get it.

2003-08-18, 19:13	#57
eepiccolo Dec 2002 Frederick County, MD 2×5×37 Posts	You could use any leftover money to fund those google ads. Perhaps increase the daily budget.

2003-08-18, 19:24	#58
Xyzzy "Mike" Aug 2002 5×17×97 Posts	The Google ads aren't working out because we never get enough click-thrus to keep them active... Hopefully someone real up-to-speed with this kind of development will chime in here soon with an explanation of why we don't need a faster processor... Although, even if we did get the 142 we'd have $100 or so left over... I'd think adding more memory would be better but the research I've done indicates that our 512MB will be more than sufficient... One possibility might be upgrading George's home boxes so he can get more work done... Maybe he needs a CPU or memory upgrade? Or maybe some more memory? Or a trip to the Bahamas? :)

2003-08-18, 19:36	#59
eepiccolo Dec 2002 Frederick County, MD 2·5·37 Posts	How about "instant" cash to whoever finds the next Mersenne prime? Something to tide them over until potentially GIMPS finds a 10M prime and distributes the EFF cash. When I say "instant," I means after our cult leaders confirm the prime. (ooh, did I just open that can of worms again? )

2003-08-18, 21:38	#61
Prime95 P90 years forever! Aug 2002 Yeehaw, FL 7543₁₀ Posts	I'd vote to keep it in reserve. For now, Xyzzy is going to host the computer and I'm sure anyone who wants to do some Opteron programming - GIMPS or otherwise - is welcome to use it. I don't think long distance development will be too troublesome. I can imagine this Opteron could become a backup primenet server. In that case, the money could be used to upgrade to raid drives, more memory, whatever.

2003-08-19, 05:25	#63
Xyzzy "Mike" Aug 2002 5·17·97 Posts	I figure George will want to run it long term to get an idea about stability...

2003-08-19, 15:56	#65
Dresdenboy Apr 2003 Berlin, Germany 169₁₆ Posts	Just stumbled over this thread ;) That's a very good idea to provide a development opteron! BTW I created a sourceforge project (http://optimizer.sourceforge.net/ - click on SF logo for the SF project page) for having a place for all AMD64 optimizers out there. I've already put some tasks into the task list. In the documentation part on the project page I put some links to helpful documents and tools. One interesting question for Prime95 development will be which OS and tools should be used. Currently it relies on masm and VC. There is a Win XP 64bit beta out. I will try to change currently available FFT algorithms to fit best to the AMD64 hardware (special prefetch methods, mem access patterns and so on). DDB Edit: It would be nice to have GCC 3.3 and maybe also 3.4 on that Opteron. SF only has 3.2 without SSE2 intrinsics. So I wouldn't need to use a cross compiler all the time ;)

2003-08-19, 19:06	#66
Xyzzy "Mike" Aug 2002 5·17·97 Posts	$895.13 in donations... $748.33 spent... $146.80 left... I just ordered the CPU... Newegg got them in this morning... Unfortunately they aren't as cheap as I expected, but they are still priced reasonably... It cost us $272 with free shipping... http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProduct.asp?description=19-103-403&depa=1 It looks like we came in right in the middle of our predicted cost of 700-800 bux... There is a good chance we will get the CPU delivered on Friday and then the box can be completed over the weekend so we can begin using it next week!

2003-08-20, 07:03	#67
QuintLeo Oct 2002 Lost in the hills of Iowa 111000000₂ Posts	64-bit LINUX already exists, from SuSE as a minimum (and therefore likely soon for ALL the major distributions). Unfortunately, there are a LOT more Windows systems around - BUT - I suspect that there will be more LINUX-based Opteron systems for a while than Windows-based ones. MIght change in a couple months if the Athlon64 ramps up production and sales fast enough, but I wouldn't BET on that...

2003-08-20, 11:11	#71
gbvalor Aug 2002 3·37 Posts	Hi, I was out and didn't read this thread :). Thanks to Dresdenboy to point me here. Well, I've also sent some bucks. And please, install a Linux SO at the moment. Guillermo

2003-08-20, 12:00	#72
trif Aug 2002 2×101 Posts	Since the bits that do the real work are in assembler, choice of compiler and platform is not critical at this point. I don't think doing dev work on a beta OS (64-bit Windows) is a really good idea. Finding a compiler to compile for 64 bit Windows might be a challenge, since we really aren't going to want to pop for a Windows OS just to do a compile.

2003-08-20, 12:15	#73
Dresdenboy Apr 2003 Berlin, Germany 19² Posts	It depends, what the used assembler understands. For example if it's MASM style it wouldn't be useful using AS. The used compiler is also interesting because of support for certain language extensions and the used GCC version should at least understand SSE2 assembler and intrinsics. I think 64bit compilers for 64bit Windows are also beta (at least regarding AMD64). Using MinGW or Cygwin it is maybe even possible to create the 64bit Windows version using GCC. Here it is at least not important to have the compiler which creates the fastest code.

2003-08-20, 13:06	#74
Dresdenboy Apr 2003 Berlin, Germany 19² Posts	Regarding memory bandwidth and Opteron: There is a nice japanese article about Opteron performance: http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/special/2003/opteron/ (Translation: http://babelfish.altavista.com/babel...n%2Findex.html) One interesting image of the benchmarks: ScienceMark 2.0 double precision matrix multiply results: http://pcweb.mycom.co.jp/special/200...images/g08.gif Some extract: [code:1]Opteron 240 (1.4GHz), single CPU in 32bit mode (SC=single channel, DC=dual channel) coded in assembler: SSE2 scalar MFLOPS (SC/DC): 1887 / 1922 (+1.9%) SSE2 packed MFLOPS (SC/DC): 1915 / 1947 (+1.7%) x87 MFLOPS (SC/DC): 1949 / 1981 (+1.6%) P4/3GHz for comparison MFLOPS (DC): 1084, 2776, 1843.[/code:1]The Opterons had registered PC2100 CL2.5 single and dual channel, the P4 got dual channel PC3200 CL2.5 on a D875PBZ board.