[Bioclusters] SGI Altix benchmarking whitepaper

[Joe Landman]

Tim Cutts wrote:

>> 8 Way AMD Opteron™ 880 - Dual Core 2.4GHz CPU (940-E)
>> £ 19,700.00 (about $34k US)
>>
>> http://www.armari.com/system.asp?SysID=336
> 
> 
> That system does only have 4GB of RAM, which is a bit paltry compared  
> to what the 16-way Altix will have, to be fair.  But nevertheless,  
> that's a competitive box.  Once you configure 2GB of memory per core  
> (which is our usual choice), a decent SCSI disk controller or a FC  HBA, 
> it becomes quite a bit more expensive at around £30k, but that's  still 
> a pretty good price.

As I remember, you can put up to 256GB of ram in a 8-way dual core box. 
It will, of course, cost you some ...


> Of course what it's missing compared to the Altix or the (much more  
> pricey) HP servers is any form of lights-out management, as far as I  
> can tell, which makes it pretty much a non-starter.  Some of the  other 
> servers they offer seem to, though (IPMI, anyway, if not remote  console)

All of the units we work with/sell have LOM as a requirement.  The iWill 
units have it, the Newisys (basis for Sun v20z), the MSI (basis for the 
IBM e326), ...  I think the HP is a modified iWill, but it is IPMI 2.0. 
  Supermicro is doing this as well.  LOM isn't an issue in most cases 
for these.  A working SOL over IPMI is, but then again very few people 
have that working right anyway.

> 
> Tim
> 

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Joseph Landman, Ph.D
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