[SWLUG] how much more CPU performance can one get these days?

[Iain Menzies-Runciman]

Mark,

Having hit the limits of machines several times in the past you may need
to change the problem.

I would assume that you have already done the obvious and optimised the
code you have (also assuming that you have the source code). 

>From the sounds of it, it is an iterative process, so just running the
code on many machines at the same time would not help.

Given that you are on a dual core, I am assuming that you are threading
and make the most of each core.

Can the code be parallelised and then split out onto multiple machines
e.g. using something like PVM or MPI? If it can then you can get
yourself a small cluster of cheap systems (e.g. 2nd hand systems at £50
a pop - or if you are like most techies use some of the old systems that
we have just lying around :-) ) and spread the load out onto a
distributed cluster. I managed to get a task from 22 hours down to 45
minutes - but that was PVM spread over 50 machines.

Regards,
Ming
---
Silicon Blade Consultants
www.siliconbladeconsultants.com


On Fri, 2009-09-18 at 08:08 +0100, Mark Summerfield wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Short version: 
>     I have Linux 2.6 2GB RAM Dual Core Pentium D 2.8GHz
>     What would I need to get 5x the CPU performance?
> 
> 
> Long version:
> 
>     I sometimes have to run a program that starts by reading 5-50MB of
>     data, then spends 12-15 minutes processing (no I/O, no graphics,
>     pure CPU), then writes out a single 5-100MB output file.
> 
>     Unfortunately I need to run this program many times to tweak the
>     input data to get exactly the output I want. So basically, it can
>     take me a whole day.
> 
>     I bought my PC a few years ago and was wondering how much
>     performance had improved in the meantime, and whether I could get a
>     5x speedup without breaking the piggy bank.
> 
> Thanks!
>