[gmx-users] How to buy a new cluster?

[Florian Haberl]

On Thursday 02 December 2004 19:05, Ran Friedman wrote:
> Relating to the same topic - are 64bit processors really superior when
> running GMX, especially considering their higher price and slower clock
> speed relative to the conventional 32bit processors?

We got here  dual opteron machines ( 2x AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 242 1,6 
ghz), and dual athlon machines ( 2x AMD Athlon(tm) MP Processor 1800+). 
Dual opteron is 1,7-2 faster than other one.
I simulate there around 30 k atoms.

But it depends as David wrote on the jobs you want to run ...


>
> David van der Spoel wrote:
> >On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 10:57 +0200, Kay Gottschalk wrote:
> >>Hi guys,
> >>
> >>I got ~15.000 Euro to buy a Cluster for Gromacs. Perhaps I can increase
> >>it to 20.000 E, but that would be a stretch. What do you think would be
> >>the best options? From the benchmark page it looks as if Athlon 64 is
> >>the processor of choice. What other components would you recommend?
> >>Thanks for your help!
> >
> >It depends on whether or not you want to do many short simulations or a
> >few big ones. In the first case single processor nodes will be fine,
> >otherwise you want more processors per box. Dual nodes probably offer
> >best price/performance, but I just ordered some Quad boxes for exactly
> >these very big and/or long simulations.
> >
> >You should also consider what OS you want to run, and get stuff that is
> >supported. We are using rocks (www.rocksclusters.org) which does not
> >have very good support for e.g. SATA disks.

Greetings,

Florian

-- 
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 Florian Haberl                            Universitaet Erlangen/
 Computer-Chemie-Centrum    Nuernberg
                                                      Naegelsbachstr. 25
                                                      D-91052 Erlangen
  Mailto: florian.haberl AT chemie.uni-erlangen.de
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