3.1.2 Basic Elements

This section presents a brief description of the most likely candidates of microprocessors for future Beowulf-class systems. The choice is constrained by three factors: performance, cost, and software compatibility. Raw performance is important to building effective medium and high end parallel systems. To build an effective parallel computer, one should start with the best uniprocessor. Of course, this tendency must be tempered by cost. The overall price/performance ratio for your favorite application is probably the most important consideration. The highest performance processor at any point in time rarely has the best price/performance ratio. Usually it is the processor one generation or one-half generation behind the cutting edge that is available with the most attractive ratio of price to performance. Recently, however, the DEC Alpha has delivered both best performance and best price/performance for many applications. The third factor of software compatibility is an important practical consideration. If a stable software environment is not available for a particular processor family, even if it is a technical pace setter. it is probably inappropriate for Beowulf. Fortunately, Linux is now available on every viable microprocessor family, and this should continue to be the case into the foreseeable future. Some key features of current processors are summarized in Table 3.1.
3.2.1 Intel Pentium II
The Intel Pentium II processor family continues the legacy of the x86 family of processors that to some define the term PC. Having software compatibility with its previous generations, the Pentium II provides an easy and cost effective way to achieve significant performance at moderate price. The original target for the Linux operating system was the Intel 80386, and over the last five years this partnership of hardware and software technologies has matured into a formidable combination that rivals any Unix based workstation. The Pentium II combines the high performance core architecture of the previous generation Pentium Pro with the MMX enhancement for multimedia applications first implemented on the Pentium MMX processors. With Intel's new 0.25 micron fabrication technology, the Pentium II exceeds its predecessors by more than doubling its processor clock to 450 MHz.
The Pentium II family includes processors with clock speeds from 233 MHz to 450 MHz. Faster models should be coupled with newer motherboards incorporating bus speeds of 100 MHz. The Pentium II processor employs a radically different physical connector than the earlier Pentium processor Socket 7 and Pentium Pro Socket 8 PGA based zero insertion force (ZIF) sockets. Instead, a new Single Edge Contact (SEC) cartridge module integrates processor, separate data and instruction L1 caches, a unified L2 cache, the system bus interface, and a separate internal bus

 



How to Build a Beowulf
How to Build a Beowulf: A Guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters (Scientific and Engineering Computation)
ISBN: 026269218X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1999
Pages: 134

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