SGI claims lead in supercomputer race

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Yeah, but Virginia Tech stomps it with FEWER processors!

Give it up for the PowerPC G5! Only 2200 of them in the form of 1100 dual-CPU Apple Xserve G5s! #7 on November's list, vs. #17 for your 2560 Opterons. Think clock speed made the difference? I doubt it: only .1GHz difference per CPU (2.3 for the PowerPCs vs. 2.2 for the Opterons).

Read the numbers and weep:
* 2,500 2.2GHz Opterons: 11,264 peak, 8,061 sustained, #17 rank
* 2,200 2.3Ghz PowerPCs: 20,240 peak, 12,250 sustained, #7 rank

The PowerPCs are over HALF AGAIN faster than the Opterons at SUSTAINED GFlops, and nearly TWICE as fast at peak GFlops, with 300 FEWER CPUs that are each less than 5% faster at clock speed! Note also the REALLY bad news: despite the G5's admittedly much lower efficiency (Sustained-to-Peak ratio), the G5's SUSTAINED performance is STILL faster (and by about 10%, roughly double the clock-speed advantage) than the Opteron's PEAK performance! With 300 FEWER CPUs, remember!

Here, need a tissue?

I haven't thoroughly analyzed yet, but it sure looks like the PowerPC is THE most efficient CPU in the Top 100 at least, going by how most people would define the term "efficient," meaning the ratio of performance to number of CPUs, not as sustained to peak the way the list defines it. It is the lowest CPU count in the Top 10. Compared even to #1 Blue Gene/L, in peak performance anyway, it gets about 20% of the performance (20,240 vs. 91,750) with considerably fewer than 10% of the processors (2,200 vs. 32,768)!

Posted by: Joel R   Posted on: 12/06/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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