Newsgroups: comp.parallel,comp.os.ms-windows.nt,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.sys.ibm.hardware,comp.sys.powerpc,comp.sys.dec,comp.sys.mips,comp.sys.intel
From: idbaxter@zilker.net (Ira Baxter)
Subject: How to find W/NT system good at tightly coupled multiprocessing
Organization: Zilker Internet Park, Austin TX
Date: 21 Dec 1995 05:04:37 GMT
Message-ID: <4aumub$1ls@oak.zilker.net>

We are about to start building a parallel symbolic manipulation
system.  We believe we need tightly coupled processors to implement
this well.  So we are looking for workstations which can do this
well.  Our requirements also include that the OS by W/NT, since we
think Microsoft has essentially won the mass-market sophisticated OS war.
(Please... no flames on this).

Ideally, we would like MP Pentiums.  However, it seems that most of
the so-called dual SMP Intel boxes are implemented by gluing 2
Pentiums to a shared cache (because Intel made this very easy to do),
and that the contention for the shared cache cuts the useful
performance of the 2nd processor to 30% instead of a much higher
figure.  We would like to run a simple test program to determine if a
machine can do tightly coupled processing well.  Does the parallel
(and/or the WNT) community have a standard test for this, akin to Spec
marks?  I asked Microsoft how they tested for this, and got a "we
don't want to talk about that" kind of response.

We would also appreciate recommendations for such machines, to be used
as development workstations.  We need 64Mb RAM, at least two
processors (Alpha, Mips, Intel, PowerPC, we don't care!), Windows NT,
MS VC++ 2.0 or above, and the ability to run more conventional MS apps
(Office stuff). It is not important that we have the fastest possible
machines; mostly we want to do our development on parallel machines to
keep ourselves honest.  We want the price to be moderate.

Please direct replies to me.   Thank you!

	[ Comp.parallel mod.: Followup-To: poster. --enm]
-- 

Ira Baxter              idbaxter@semdesigns.com   512-343-8080 [voice/FAX]
Semantic Designs, Inc.  8101 Asmara Drive         Austin, Texas 78750



