Hardware
Configuration
A high-performance Linux cluster using RedHat Linux and Open
Source Cluster Application Resources (OSCAR)
The current kernel in use as of 06/17/2003 is 2.4.21
Head Node:
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 - 1.70GHz
L1 Cache: 20KB; 8KB data + 12KB Execution Trace
L2 Cache: 256KB
Memory: 1024MB RDRAM @ 400MHz (100MHz * 4)
Front Side Bus: 400 MHz
Storage: 1358735 MB, SCSI RAID 5 (120GB * 12) using a 3ware Escalade 7500 Parallel ATA RAID controller
Network: Gigabit Ethernet (copper)
Compute Nodes (1-26):
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 - 1.70GHz
L1 Cache: 20KB; 8KB data + 12KB Execution Trace
L2 Cache: 256KB
Memory: 1024MB RDRAM @ 400MHz (100MHz * 4)
Storage: 80GB ATA100
Network: Gigabit Ethernet (copper)
Compute Nodes (27-42):
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 - 1.70GHz
L1 Cache: 20KB; 8KB data + 12KB Execution Trace
L2 Cache: 256KB
Memory: 2048MB RDRAM @ 400MHz (100MHz * 4)
Storage: 40GB ATA100
Network: Gigabit Ethernet (copper)
The head and 42 compute nodes are currently linked using full-duplex Gigabit
Ethernet interconnect.
Performance
Characteristics of P4
The Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz processor used is a 7th generation x86 processor
with additional features to improve performance. These features are the
basis of the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture. Features ideal for the
Pentium 4's use as a computation processor:
1. Hyper-Pipelined Technology - The pipeline depth is doubled from 10
used on the P6 microarchitecture to 20. The deeper pipeline allows the
architecture design to easily scale to high frequencies.
2. 400-MHz System Bus - A quad pumped 400MHz system bus allows up to 3.2GB/sec
of bandwidth from the processor to memory. This is a large improvement
compared to 1.06GB/sec from the P6 133MHz system bus.
3. Level 1 Execution Trace Cache and Advanced Dynamic Execution - Used
to deliver a high volume of instructions to processor execution units
and in reducing the recovery time needed for mis-predicted branches. A
reduction of up to 33% of branch mis-predictions over the P6 architecture
is possible.
4. Rapid Execution Engine - The Arithmetic Logic Units (ALUs) operate
at twice the core frequency. This allows basic integer instructions to
execute in one-half a clock cycle. This results in a 3.4GHz frequency
when using 1.7GHz processors.
Additional information on the Pentium 4 can be found at: http://developer.intel.com/design/Pentium4/prodbref/
Despite lower Instructions Per Clock (IPC) than the P6 core (due to the
increased pipeline depth), the Pentium 4 1.7 is capable of performance
of up to 2 GFLOPS due to high clock speeds. This is shown by the SiSoft
Sandra 2001 CPU synthetic Benchmark composed of the Dhrystone Benchmark
for ALU performance in MIPS and the Whetstone Benchmark for FPU performance
in MFLOPS.
Source: http://www.activewin.com/reviews/hardware/processors/intel/p417ghz/bench.shtml
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HPCFD Group, Virginia Tech, 2002
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