[ale] Suggestions for 64 bit dual Opteron motherboards

[Bjorn Dittmer-Roche]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2004, Dow Hurst wrote:

> I've been looking at performance of Opterons vs Itaniums/Xeons.  The more
> Opterons on the motherboard the better.  So, 4P and 8P boards are out there
> now.  Microway or Aspen have 4P units.  A Russian company has created the 8P
> unit.  The Intel stuff is limited on interprocessor communication by a single
> pipe while the Opterons have a switch like interconnect with much higher
> bandwidth.  The Xeon's top out and get starved by the limited pipe they have
> to talk thru.  It is a long term problem Intel has gotten around for now by
> bumping up CPU GHz.
>
> So you get a real increase in performance on the right kind of code on a 4P+
> motherboard. ;-)
>
> I know your not after that info.  I just wanted to blab about what I've been
> researching....

I'm interested! I know this has been a long standing problem for intel.
One of the big advantages for years of companies like Sun
and SGI has been their ability to scale processors. Do
you happen to know how well the Opterons compare to these vendors?

	bjorn