[Eug Wanker]

See here:

[RooneyX]

We need Itanium 2, dude.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by RooneyX:
We need Itanium 2, dude.

[saru boy]

Originally posted by RooneyX:
We need Itanium 2, dude.

Don't you mean we need a Cray XI?

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by saru boy:
Don't you mean we need a Cray XI?

Yeah, esp. since the G5 kills the Itanium 2 in the memory intensive bench.

A 6 Watt chip with Cray-level power in my PowerBook would do quite nicely though.

[idyll]

What operating system does the Cray run?

[Thinine]

CrayOS?

[businezguy]

Anybody for some Cray fish?

[AngryAngel]

Both the Itanium2 SGI machines had 16GB RAM, more than 10x the G5's 1.5GB.

Using all their processors, the SGIs would be somewhat faster though (the 900Mhz has 4 processors, the 1.3Ghz has 48!).

[Eug]

Your jokes are making me Crayzy!!!

BTW, apparently the Cray X1 ships with the Cray UNICOS operating system.

[CubeBoy]

Originally posted by Eug Wanker:
Yeah, esp. since the G5 kills the Itanium 2 in the memory intensive bench.

A 6 Watt chip with Cray-level power in my PowerBook would do quite nicely though.

Hmm, interesting, I always thought Itanium 2 had alot of bandwidth available especially with the 128 bit bus and L3 cache (12.8 GB/s peak bandwidth for the 1.3 GHz, 3 GB L3 model and this is a single processor bench).

Cray cpus have been focusing on vector performance lately (which is probably why they do extremely well on this particular benchmark), scalar-wise, I can't say I'm very impressed with them. Any chance we could get any details on the benchmark itself?

[Eug]

Any chance we could get any details on the benchmark itself?

This is all we have:

---

I've benchmarked a several machines against a recently acquired 1.8GHz PowerMacintosh G5. The machines are a Dell 2.4GHz Xeon P4, a 900MHz Itanium2 SGI Altix, a 1.3GHz Itanium2 SGI Altix, a PowerMacintosh 1.42GHz G4, and a Cray X1.
I performed three tests with the same code configured in small, medium, and large memory configurations. The code solves the governing equations of fluid dynamics - the Navier-Stokes equations - and is floating point intensive.

A PDF file is included but the summary is this: Initially the Itanium2 based machines are faster, but the G5 extends its lead over all machines (except for the Cray X1) as the size of the code (memory) becomes larger. The largest size (500MB) is low to typical of the size of jobs I submit to massively parallel supercomputing platforms.
Sean Garrick
Nelson Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Minnesota

Computational Fluid Dynamics Code
Explicit MacCormack-based (Fortran90)
Compiled via XLF on Macintosh, EFC on Itanium2, and FTN on Cray

Memory Configurations
Small (8MB): 500x125 grid points computed for 1500 time-steps
Medium (75MB): 1500x375 grid points computed for 700 time-steps
Large (500MB): 4000x1000 grid points computed for 300 time-steps

Computers
Apple PowerMacintosh G4 Dual Processor 1.42GHz (2GB RAM)
Apple PowerMacintosh G5 1.8GHz (PowerPC 970) (1.5GB RAM)
Dell 2.4GHz Xeon Pentium 4 (TBD)
SGI Altix 3000 4 processor Intel Itanium2 900MHz (16GB RAM)
SGI Altix 3000 48 processor Intel Itanium2 1.3GHz (16GB RAM)
Cray XI (>64GB RAM)

Conditions
All computations utilized one processor
All times are in seconds (shorter is better)
No input/output

Summary
The 1.8GHz G5 is significantly faster than the 1.42GHz G4. As the job size or memory requirement is increased the G5 pulls ahead. The G5 is 2.73 times faster on the small memory code and 3.06 times faster on the medium memory code.

For the small memory job, the 1.3GHz Itanium2 (SGI Altix) is twice the speed of the G5 and the 900MHz Itanium2 (SGI Altix) is roughly 50% faster.

For the medium memory job the performance of the G5 and 900MHz Itanium are effectively equivalent, while the 1.3GHz Itanium is 15 percent faster.

For the large memory job, the performance of the G5 is nearly twice the speed of the 900MHz Itanium and is 1.48 times the speed of the 1.3GHz Itanium2.

The Cray XI spanks everything.

[Link]

To put this into reality:


That big black and red box right there is a cray x1. A set of 2 or 3 dual 2ghz g5s would whoop that thing...

[Hydra]

Originally posted by Link:
To put this into reality:


That big black and red box right there is a cray x1. A set of 2 or 3 dual 2ghz g5s would whoop that thing...

That's what VT is counting on, only with 1097 more G5's than that.

-Jerry C.

[digital_dreamer]

I wonder what affect RAM capacity would have the this benchmark? Would there be any advantage to adding more RAM to the G5’s 1.5GB, especially since the Itanium has 16GB?

And, no one knows about the RAM on the Dell, yet?

OTH, I suppose if RAM capacity was significant, the professor would have said so, no?

regards,
MAJ

[olePigeon]

What's the difference between an Itanium 2 and a bowling ball?

A bowling ball has more software.

(Adapted from an old DEC Alpha joke.)

[digital_dreamer]

Could anyone here post some Xbench numbers from their XI, or at least, a few Photoshop filters?
A recompile might be necessary...