Subject: Re: cpu cycle server machine
To: der Mouse <mouse@Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@most.weird.com>
List: current-users
Date: 05/10/1998 21:00:54
[ On Sun, May 10, 1998 at 19:05:51 (-0400), der Mouse wrote: ]
> Subject: cpu cycle server machine
>
> I have minor philosophical objections to the Intel architecture, but
> would be willing to ignore them if the price differential is
> nontrivial.

I have major philosophical and technical objections to Intel products.

Luckily the Alpha eliminates all of my technichal objections, and at
least emotionally eliminates my philosophical objections to Intel.

One attribute where the Alpha beats the Intel on design and reliability
is that it uses ECC on all external data paths.

If you're willing to play games at loading the SRM console into a bare
motherboard (something I'm hoping to do but have not yet done), you can
get Alpha 21164 systems very inexpensively.

Here are some motherboard+CPU only prices ($USA) I got from DCG
Inc. recently.  Lots of people have had successful dealings with them.

    PC164LX & SX
    Processor     cache     price     SPECint95     SPECfp95
    211PC-533MHz  1mb-7.5ns $ 800.    12.4          16.1 <New SX>
    21164-533MHz  2mb-9ns   $1300.    16.1          18.8 <New LX>
    21164-600MHz  2mb-9ns   $2845.    17.9          19.9

(I hope they don't mind my posting this excerpt from the quote!  I'd
personally love to encourage lots of NetBSD folks to choose Alpha
instead of Intel, and I think these prices should do just that.)

You need 72-bit 168-pin unbuffered SDRAM for the LX, of course.  I'm not
sure about the SX -- seems they may work with 64-bit SDRAM.

These URLs give more info about the specific motherboards, and the
recommended memory parts list:

    http://www.digital.com/semiconductor/alpha/alpha-memlist.htm
    http://www.digital.com/semiconductor/alpha/dsc-pc164sx.html
    http://www.digital.com/semiconductor/alpha/dsc-pc164lx.html

They also quoted me similar machines (LX only) with a supposedly legal
SRM license (but without Digital Unix).  Multiply by about 3.6.  With DU
you multiply by about 4.7.

I think a 266MHz Pentium-II gets about a 14-15 SPECint95 rating.
Unfortunately SPECrate numbers are rarely quoted.

> I'm not looking for much of a system beyond CPU crunch: CPU, RAM on the
> order of 32-128 megs, Ethernet (10baseT or AUI) for talking to the
> world, SCSI for disk, and either a minimal console screen-&-keyboard or
> a serial console port.

If you're doing anything approaching general-purpose computing then you
definitely require a fast disk subsystem (SCSI Fast&Wide with either
multiple CCD'ed drives, or true RAID), and really fast memory bandwidth.

Luckily the Alpha class machines win big time here again.  They support
PCI based SCSI controllers, and they usually have at least 128-bit
interleaved memory busses.

If you were to go for the cheapest Intel based machine around my
recommendation would be to look for a VIA-Tech VP3 based Pentium
motherboard, such as the FIC PA-2012.  With care and good parts and
cooling they can run their backplane a bit faster than 66MHz, and they
support up to 2MB of L2 cache which can help a lot in a really busy
G.P.-Unix box.  The VP3 also does ECC on SDRAM, so is at least
semi-reliable (the cache isn't even parity protected though).

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>