| Sun vs PC Linux - Anyone making the shift? [message #29300] |
Mon, 11 February 2002 10:23  |
Michael Lefsky
Messages: 9
Registered: October 1999
|
Junior Member |
|
|
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 5.50.4207.2601" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<DIV>Well, my grant just through the university's processing and I am already to
purchase my new machine, but I am undecided as to what platform to purchase. My
most computationally intensive work will be in IDL and so I want to
maxamize the speed (and stability) that it runs at. I also want to work on a
unix platform. I recently tested a close twin to the machine I want (I want the
Sun Blade 1000 with 2 x 900 processors, the machine I tested is a SB1000 with 2
x 450 processors), on the IDLSPEC2 benchmark (which I know is flawed, but is the
best available), with these results:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A name=IS2_37><B><FONT color=#ff0000>Rank:37 IDLSpecMark:
1.556</FONT></B></A><BR><B><FONT color=#000099>Sun Blade 1000 2x450MHz
2048MB <none></FONT></B><BR><A
href="mailto:lefsky@fsl.orst.edu">lefsky@fsl.orst.edu</A><BR>Fri Jan 25 08:54:31
2002<BR>Video: <unavail> <FONT color=#b23aee>(DirectColor
24)</FONT><BR>sparc:sunos:unix:5.4:Sep 25 2000<BR>Time_Test3 (no I/O)
=>arith: 0.225s (<FONT color=#009900> 1.936</FONT>) geom: 0.199s (<FONT
color=#009900> 1.854</FONT>)<BR>Graphics_Times3 =====>arith: 0.546s (<FONT
color=#009900> 1.612</FONT>) geom: 0.328s (<FONT color=#009900>
1.974</FONT>)<BR>IO_Test: 0.575s (<FONT color=#009900> 0.797</FONT>)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The fastest PC unix machine :</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A name=IS2_7><B><FONT color=#ff0000>Rank: 7 IDLSpecMark:
3.036</FONT></B></A><BR><B><FONT color=#000099>Home-built Athalon
2x1200MHz 1024MB RH Linux 7.2</FONT></B><BR><A
href="mailto:tclement@checont1.ucsd.edu">tclement@checont1.ucsd.edu</A><BR>Wed
Nov 7 18:12:43 2001<BR>Video: ATI Rage 128 <FONT
color=#b23aee>(TrueColor 24)</FONT><BR>x86:linux:unix:5.5:Aug 28
2001<BR>Time_Test3 (no I/O) =>arith: 0.126s (<FONT color=#009900>
3.444</FONT>) geom: 0.102s (<FONT color=#009900>
3.625</FONT>)<BR>Graphics_Times3 =====>arith: 0.371s (<FONT color=#009900>
2.377</FONT>) geom: 0.192s (<FONT color=#009900> 3.377</FONT>)<BR>IO_Test:
0.206s (<FONT color=#009900> 2.219</FONT>)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The fastest PC:</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><A name=IS2_3><B><FONT color=#ff0000>Rank: 3 IDLSpecMark:
3.723</FONT></B></A><BR><B><FONT color=#000099>DELL Precision 530 / Pentium
Xeon 1700MHz 1000MB <none></FONT></B><BR><A
href="mailto:hwarren@cfa.harvard.edu">hwarren@cfa.harvard.edu</A><BR>Fri Oct 19
13:52:14 2001<BR>Video: NVIDIA Quadro2 Pro <FONT color=#b23aee>(TrueColor
24)</FONT><BR>x86:Win32:Windows:5.4:Sep 25 2000<BR>Time_Test3 (no I/O)
=>arith: 0.095s (<FONT color=#009900> 4.606</FONT>) geom: 0.082s (<FONT
color=#009900> 4.507</FONT>)<BR>Graphics_Times3 =====>arith: 0.311s (<FONT
color=#009900> 2.836</FONT>) geom: 0.249s (<FONT color=#009900>
2.606</FONT>)<BR>IO_Test: 0.234s (<FONT color=#009900> 1.957</FONT>)</DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>My questions are:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Why are inexpensive PC archictectures beating pants off of Sun machines
that cost twice as much (but not alphas)?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>What are Windows machines ahead of PC linux machines? I would have thought
the oppositive would be true.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Has anyone gone in either direction (Sun to Linux or visa versa) and what
were your experiences?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>If I get enough responses, I will post a IDL Sun vs PC summary.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Thanks</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Michael</DIV></BODY></HTML>
|
|
|
|
| Re: Sun vs PC Linux - Anyone making the shift? [message #29413 is a reply to message #29300] |
Fri, 15 February 2002 19:45  |
Marc Schellens
Messages: 14
Registered: November 1999
|
Junior Member |
|
|
> What are Windows machines ahead of PC linux machines? I would have
> thought the oppositive would be true.
>
> Has anyone gone in either direction (Sun to Linux or visa versa) and
> what were your experiences?
As the PC you tested for speed are different, I think the
result is not very reliable. Perform the test on the same
hardware with Linux and Windows.
We are using here both sun and linux.
Sun is very expensive but also very reliable.
Our servers are sun machines. And till now (knock on wood)
never failed in three years.
They manage about 1TB (Raid5). (One hardisk was once broken,
but because of raid 5 no data was lost)
As workstations we started with sum but now everybody has a linux
box. They work well together with the sun servers.
But are not as stable as the sun machines (which might
be due to more 'progressive' applications).
In another new lab we started with linux servers.
Disk capacity is 500GB (Raid5).
Since one year they work also almost without failure.
(One harddisk broke, but no data was lost s.a.).
To me it appears that nowadays, PC have the much better value,
at least using IDL. Also as Ken said already,
you get a *much* more comfortable environment.
(we had KDE1 under Solaris, but to compile it it took
some effort and CDE... - well its a shame that all the big
workstation companys couldn't come up with something better
- see KDE2).
And usually you do not need 99.9% availability in science.
Provided a powerful backup solution (using DLT), which you
should have anyway you are on the save side.
Concerning IDL, the compatibility is very high.
Our IDL programs run both on IDL for linux and Solaris.
This is not true for windows, here the handling of filenames
has to be adapted.
HDH,
marc
|
|
|
|
comp.lang.idl-pvwave archive
Members
Search
Help
Login
Home
