Re: Ultra AXmp

["Robert G. Brown" <rgb@phy.duke.edu>]

On Tue, 14 Jul 1998, Bob Drzyzgula wrote:

> Well, I guess that answers the question of why Intel doesn't
> cause quad-processor x86 servers to cost $20K... they just
> hadn't gotten around to it yet. :-)

Yeah, but watch competition drop that price like a rock over the next
year.  Intel is just trying to squeeze a bit of extra juice out of the
lemon before its X86 competitors come out with multiprocessing CPUs
and before it comes out with 450 MHz PII's and ultimately merced.  PII
prices have been in slow-but-steady decline from the minute they came
out, and let's be frank -- unless somebody shows a huge performance
advantage for the new processors (and so far it looks, unsurprisingly
to me, like good old clock by itself continues to dominate overall CPU
performance) they are not going to sell if they are priced at 2-4
times single CPU prices.

> > 400 MHz - 2 MB cache $4489 !!!!!!!!!!!
> > 400 MHz - 1 MB cache $2836
> > 400 MHz - 512K cache $1124

These prices are not so bad, really -- I've paid $1100 for 512K 200MHz
PPros!  The only unknown is the cost of a quad motherboard that uses
them.  The Goliath quads have always been expensive, but if quads come
out at no more than (say) $1K and octets at $2K (I can dream, can't
I?) then a four processor system would probably cost around $6K in
components, plus memory; an eight processor system would cost perhaps
$11K, plus memory.  Memory is likely to be a bigger hit -- 128 MB
SDRAM DIMMS are cheap at $200, but 256 MB DIMMS are still rather dear
at ~$800-900.  If the motherboards still come with only four DIMM
slots, getting more than 128 MB/processor will get pretty expensive.

Note that I discount the 1MB cache and 2 MB cache CPU's entirely -- for
MOST beowulfy apps I really don't think that this will matter enough
to be worth it until they drop these prices significantly.  I'd rather
have 2 512K cache CPUs than 0.8 1024K cache CPUs...although real
webserver-type apps might find the bigger caches worth the money.

   rgb

Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb@phy.duke.edu