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From: Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>
To: Joe Sauer <jsauer@vernier.com>
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Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:46:36 +0100
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Cc: poky@o-hand.com
Subject: Re: requesting input on specs for a new Poky build server
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Hi Joe,

On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 14:50 -0700, Joe Sauer wrote:
> I have the pleasure of spec'ing out a new server for doing Poky builds
> (we are at Green 3.3.1).  As a reference point, my desktop machine is
> a quad-Xeon @ 2.5 GHz with 4GB of RAM and SATA disk.  I can do a full
> "clean" build for our LabQuest (armv5te) in 2 hours.
> 
> Here are some questions I would like to get feedback on regarding a
> build server:
> 
> 1.  Would I get better build time going with more procs (8?) or faster
> procs (3+ GHz)?
> 
> 2.  Are SATA drives OK, or should I go with RAID to get better R/W
> performance?
> 
> 3.  If I have to choose one or the other, should I go with faster
> procs or faster disk I/O?

Good questions and I'm not sure I have a definitive answer for you. Some
parts of the build are I/O bound, some are CPU bound and I think you
could see benefits by improving both at this point in time. I'd suspect
CPU still wins as the bigger bottleneck though. Disk I/O can partly be
worked around by a little more RAM.

Cheers,

Richard