From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mga02.intel.com (mga02.intel.com [134.134.136.20]) by mx1.pokylinux.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A5514C80581 for ; Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:23:24 -0500 (CDT) Received: from orsmga001.jf.intel.com ([10.7.209.18]) by orsmga101.jf.intel.com with ESMTP; 20 Apr 2011 08:23:23 -0700 X-ExtLoop1: 1 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.64,247,1301900400"; d="scan'208";a="736079170" Received: from unknown (HELO [10.255.12.227]) ([10.255.12.227]) by orsmga001.jf.intel.com with ESMTP; 20 Apr 2011 08:23:23 -0700 Message-ID: <4DAEFA6F.3010503@linux.intel.com> Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 08:23:27 -0700 From: Darren Hart User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.14) Gecko/20110223 Lightning/1.0b2 Thunderbird/3.1.8 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Tom Rini References: <4DA396CF.4080804@mentor.com> In-Reply-To: <4DA396CF.4080804@mentor.com> Cc: poky@yoctoproject.org Subject: Re: requesting input on specs for a new Poky build server X-BeenThere: poky@yoctoproject.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.13 Precedence: list List-Id: Poky build system developer discussion List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:23:24 -0000 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On 04/11/2011 05:03 PM, Tom Rini wrote: > On 04/11/2011 02:50 PM, 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)? I would go with more CPUs before I went with faster CPUs (at least from 2.5 to 3.3). Poky builds scale nicely to at least 16 physical cores (ie 4 quad-cores, hyperthreading is effective as well, but not so much as physical cores), so until you get to that point, more is better in my opinion. >> >> 2. Are SATA drives OK, or should I go with RAID to get better R/W >> performance? A RAID 0 array of SATA drives is your best performing option (short of a RAID 0 SSD array). You have to trade this extra performance for lower reliability. RAID 0 has no redundancy, if one drive fails, all your data is gone - so only keep recreatable data on the RAID array. I'd start without RAID and test, see if you are maximizing your IO bandwidth. >> >> 3. If I have to choose one or the other, should I go with faster procs >> or faster disk I/O? Provided you have a reasonably decent SATA controller on board, I'd opt for _more_ procs. > > If you're on somewhat of a budget, the general rule of thumb about going > for last months fastest processor (as opposed to the one just released) > is probably a wise bet. And you probably want 8-12GB ram if you can fit it. > > The only real and not always obvious trick is if you can afford an SSD > (and afford to kill it and replace it every so often) doing your builds > there is a real big win. The failures are the scary part as you mentioned. I keep my git repositories and downloads on an SSD and do my builds on a 2 disk RAID array. I usually see either build dependencies or CPU as the bottleneck before IO. -- Darren Hart Intel Open Source Technology Center Yocto Project - Linux Kernel