[GRLUG] large systems performance

[Bob Kline]

On Nov 16, 2007 12:57 AM, Tim Schmidt <timschmidt at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Nov 16, 2007 12:45 AM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If running Linux,  which  version?
>
> I've just tossed Ubuntu 7.10 server on it.
>
> > Does the performance seem to result
> > more from all the processors or all the
> > memory, or is it hard to tell?
>
> Depends entirely on what sort of load you put on it...  of course, all
> that ram doesn't hurt.
>
> >  I'd think swapping could be pretty fast in an
> > out of memory, but the instant it involves
> > a hard drive it's over.
>
> ?  Swapping always involves block storage of some type.  How much it
> hurts again, depends on memory access patterns of your load, as well
> as what percentage of the working set is swapped, and so on.
>
> --tim
>
>
So would you guess that even more
processors would help?  With your
load profile that is?

It's not impossible that even a desktop
will have hundreds of CPUs one day.
I have no idea whether Linux could
support that.  But with the concept of
one process per processor, without much
swapping while in typical use,    one
would see even more improvement.
Swapping always creates overhead,  so
the best way to reduce overhead is to not
swap where possible.  Including letting
other jobs wait in some circumstances
if they are not real time.

I just bought 4GB of memory for $100
recently.  For someone with deep pockets
a 100GB or more of memory could be
practical today.  As soon as anyone makes
a motherboard to enable this anyway.

     -Bob
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20071116/ad4a51de/attachment-0001.htm