Joshua C. wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I’ve been planning on buying a new machine but I’m not that sure what to take.
>
> We’ve been seeing test and reviews on the internet between amd and
> linux. I can say that when it comes to pure (single) core apps then
> intel might have the lead. When it comes to scalability then amd is on
> the move.

Are you going to really use a lot of CPU power? (such as video processing)
Probably not.

If you are just planning to have a fast general-use computer, than
do not worry too much about the CPU, as AMD or Intel and 4 or 6 cores
will not make a real difference to you.
Consider buying a SSD disk for your operating system and your "live" data
plus an additional big traditional disk for your "storage" data.
I assure you that a SSD disk will have much more impact on the speed
of the machine.

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On 08/08/2010 01:15 PM, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
> Joshua C. wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I’ve been planning on buying a new machine but I’m not that sure what to take.
>>
>> We’ve been seeing test and reviews on the internet between amd and
>> linux. I can say that when it comes to pure (single) core apps then
>> intel might have the lead. When it comes to scalability then amd is on
>> the move.
> Are you going to really use a lot of CPU power? (such as video processing)
> Probably not.
>
> If you are just planning to have a fast general-use computer, than
> do not worry too much about the CPU, as AMD or Intel and 4 or 6 cores
> will not make a real difference to you.
> Consider buying a SSD disk for your operating system and your "live" data
> plus an additional big traditional disk for your "storage" data.
> I assure you that a SSD disk will have much more impact on the speed
> of the machine.
>
Some years ago, I benchmarked a 32 bit application on
3 GHz Athlon 64 and 3GHz Pentium (was latest release at that time).
Both machines running RHEL 4.
The application consistently completed on the AMD in half the time it
took on the Pentium. The cause of the improvement was IMHO the
CPU-Memory bus speeds of the AMD chip. The front side bus of teh pentium
could not move the data as fast. And That app was very very cpu and
memory intensive, with datasets as large as 3GB!!
Furthermore, it was not a multithreaded app.

Nowadays, the multicore pentiums have sped up the FSB to respectable
speeds of 1.6GHz or perhaps even higher. But I have not kept up with
this area of the technology, so I could not address the very latest
cpus from AMD and Intel.


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JD wrote:
> On 08/08/2010 01:15 PM, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
>> Are you going to really use a lot of CPU power? (such as video processing)
>> Probably not.
>>
>> If you are just planning to have a fast general-use computer, than
>> do not worry too much about the CPU, as AMD or Intel and 4 or 6 cores
>> will not make a real difference to you.
>> Consider buying a SSD disk for your operating system and your "live" data
>> plus an additional big traditional disk for your "storage" data.
>> I assure you that a SSD disk will have much more impact on the speed
>> of the machine.
>>
> Some years ago, I benchmarked a 32 bit application on
> 3 GHz Athlon 64 and 3GHz Pentium (was latest release at that time).
> Both machines running RHEL 4.
> The application consistently completed on the AMD in half the time it
> took on the Pentium. The cause of the improvement was IMHO the
> CPU-Memory bus speeds of the AMD chip. The front side bus of teh pentium
> could not move the data as fast. And That app was very very cpu and
> memory intensive, with datasets as large as 3GB!!
> Furthermore, it was not a multithreaded app.
>
> Nowadays, the multicore pentiums have sped up the FSB to respectable
> speeds of 1.6GHz or perhaps even higher. But I have not kept up with
> this area of the technology, so I could not address the very latest
> cpus from AMD and Intel.

What you say in some way confirms my point.
In an extreme CPU-bounded case (you said "very very"), the speed
ratio between the CPUs was about 2:1.

On the other hand, in extreme IO-bounded cases, the speed ratio
between the hard disk and a SSD can be 100:1.

Consider that I/O intensive tasks are more frequent than CPU intensive
tasks for the average computer user (just consider booting, folder
browsing, app loading, data loading, data searching, file copying, ...).
That is why money spent for a SSD is well spent.

What should one choose between (for about the same total price)?

a) a 40mq house plus a 300km/h car
b) a 4000mq house plus a 150km/h car

I would say: "go for a) only if you are in car racing, otherwise go for b)"

(note that I applied the 2:1 and 100:1 ratio).

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On 08/09/2010 06:51 AM, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
> JD wrote:
>> On 08/08/2010 01:15 PM, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
>>> Are you going to really use a lot of CPU power? (such as video processing)
>>> Probably not.
>>>
>>> If you are just planning to have a fast general-use computer, than
>>> do not worry too much about the CPU, as AMD or Intel and 4 or 6 cores
>>> will not make a real difference to you.
>>> Consider buying a SSD disk for your operating system and your "live" data
>>> plus an additional big traditional disk for your "storage" data.
>>> I assure you that a SSD disk will have much more impact on the speed
>>> of the machine.
>>>
>> Some years ago, I benchmarked a 32 bit application on
>> 3 GHz Athlon 64 and 3GHz Pentium (was latest release at that time).
>> Both machines running RHEL 4.
>> The application consistently completed on the AMD in half the time it
>> took on the Pentium. The cause of the improvement was IMHO the
>> CPU-Memory bus speeds of the AMD chip. The front side bus of teh pentium
>> could not move the data as fast. And That app was very very cpu and
>> memory intensive, with datasets as large as 3GB!!
>> Furthermore, it was not a multithreaded app.
>>
>> Nowadays, the multicore pentiums have sped up the FSB to respectable
>> speeds of 1.6GHz or perhaps even higher. But I have not kept up with
>> this area of the technology, so I could not address the very latest
>> cpus from AMD and Intel.
> What you say in some way confirms my point.
> In an extreme CPU-bounded case (you said "very very"), the speed
> ratio between the CPUs was about 2:1.
>
> On the other hand, in extreme IO-bounded cases, the speed ratio
> between the hard disk and a SSD can be 100:1.
>
> Consider that I/O intensive tasks are more frequent than CPU intensive
> tasks for the average computer user (just consider booting, folder
> browsing, app loading, data loading, data searching, file copying, ...).
> That is why money spent for a SSD is well spent.
>
> What should one choose between (for about the same total price)?
>
> a) a 40mq house plus a 300km/h car
> b) a 4000mq house plus a 150km/h car
>
> I would say: "go for a) only if you are in car racing, otherwise go for b)"
>
> (note that I applied the 2:1 and 100:1 ratio).
>
No question. You're preaching to the choire.
Disk intensive processes will indeed achieve
that speedup ratio.
The app I tested was used for verifying digital designs.
It's data set was huge and, to add insult to injury, it was
very deeply recursive - thousands of recursion stacks.
If I could AMD's latest and fasted 8-core cpu and
SSD disks on a modern mobo, 16GB high speed ram,
I would have to spend much more than I can part with

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On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Michael Miles <mmamiga6@gmail.com> wrote:

>>
> Well, 3D animation is my thing and has been since the Amiga platform.
> The power to render many minutes of animation and still have functional
> machine to do the rest of my daily activity.
>
> I use a virtual machine running windows 7 for my animation software and
> if I want to convert a HD movie at the same time as I do everything else
> it shows a definite slow down.

I run a 4-node rendering cluster ( dual quad-cores on each, or 32
cores total and 16G RAM each node). They're headless and just have
minimal local disks. All nodes write via bonded 2 x 1Gb Ethernet to a
fileserver, but network is usually not the bottleneck. When in use,
CPUs are pegged for hours at a time. Modeling is done on a quad-core
Windows 7 system with some relatively high-end ATI cards, but gets
final render in the cluster. HD conversion is a minor step since the
renders are done at final resolution.

My point is that it may be more effective to separate your rendering
hardware. I.e., you can buy a low-end desktop with decent video cards
that will run your software natively *and* a separate, headless
compute node that does all the heavy lifting rather than try to bulk
up a desktop. The desktop will generally have crappy disk i/o, crappy
memory limits (8G is average), crappy network (wireless or GBit), and
your CPU will be busy drawing a pretty desktop than actually rendering
frames.
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Kwan Lowe wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Michael Miles<mmamiga6@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>
>> Well, 3D animation is my thing and has been since the Amiga platform.
>> The power to render many minutes of animation and still have functional
>> machine to do the rest of my daily activity.
>>
>> I use a virtual machine running windows 7 for my animation software and
>> if I want to convert a HD movie at the same time as I do everything else
>> it shows a definite slow down.
>>
> I run a 4-node rendering cluster ( dual quad-cores on each, or 32
> cores total and 16G RAM each node). They're headless and just have
> minimal local disks. All nodes write via bonded 2 x 1Gb Ethernet to a
> fileserver, but network is usually not the bottleneck. When in use,
> CPUs are pegged for hours at a time. Modeling is done on a quad-core
> Windows 7 system with some relatively high-end ATI cards, but gets
> final render in the cluster. HD conversion is a minor step since the
> renders are done at final resolution.
>
> My point is that it may be more effective to separate your rendering
> hardware. I.e., you can buy a low-end desktop with decent video cards
> that will run your software natively *and* a separate, headless
> compute node that does all the heavy lifting rather than try to bulk
> up a desktop. The desktop will generally have crappy disk i/o, crappy
> memory limits (8G is average), crappy network (wireless or GBit), and
> your CPU will be busy drawing a pretty desktop than actually rendering
> frames.
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



I have noticed a bit of a confusing issue.
Lightwave running under Win 7 as a virtual machine under Fedora 12 runs
faster than a native Win 7 machine.
Strange but true.

It easily shaves off 2 - 3 minutes / frame as a virtual machine.


Anyway thanks for the comments.
Question is there a way to have all my cores assigned to one task?
I can easily dedicate the cores to a virtual machine but in a native
Fedora environment I was wondering if I can get all cores to work on one
task.


And one other question.

What software are you using for your render cluster?


Way back in the Amiga days I was using Renderman as a rendering farm and
the Screamernet for the Video Toaster.

I have been doing some experimentation with Blender and it looks very
good but I'm still looking at Lightwave 9 as the best. It is only ported
for Windows though making it a pain as I would like very much to use a
native linux enviroment.


It also seems that Lightwave butterfly netrender for linux is here

http://www.weez.com/2010/08/linux-lightwave-render-farm-getting-bnr-butterfly-netrender-to-work-in-debian-possibly-others/




We shall see!!!!




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On 08/09/2010 01:37 PM, Michael Miles wrote:
> Kwan Lowe wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Michael Miles<mmamiga6@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>
>>> Well, 3D animation is my thing and has been since the Amiga platform.
>>> The power to render many minutes of animation and still have functional
>>> machine to do the rest of my daily activity.
>>>
>>> I use a virtual machine running windows 7 for my animation software and
>>> if I want to convert a HD movie at the same time as I do everything else
>>> it shows a definite slow down.
>>>
>> I run a 4-node rendering cluster ( dual quad-cores on each, or 32
>> cores total and 16G RAM each node). They're headless and just have
>> minimal local disks. All nodes write via bonded 2 x 1Gb Ethernet to a
>> fileserver, but network is usually not the bottleneck. When in use,
>> CPUs are pegged for hours at a time. Modeling is done on a quad-core
>> Windows 7 system with some relatively high-end ATI cards, but gets
>> final render in the cluster. HD conversion is a minor step since the
>> renders are done at final resolution.
>>
>> My point is that it may be more effective to separate your rendering
>> hardware. I.e., you can buy a low-end desktop with decent video cards
>> that will run your software natively *and* a separate, headless
>> compute node that does all the heavy lifting rather than try to bulk
>> up a desktop. The desktop will generally have crappy disk i/o, crappy
>> memory limits (8G is average), crappy network (wireless or GBit), and
>> your CPU will be busy drawing a pretty desktop than actually rendering
>> frames.
>>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> I have noticed a bit of a confusing issue.
> Lightwave running under Win 7 as a virtual machine under Fedora 12 runs
> faster than a native Win 7 machine.
> Strange but true.
>
> It easily shaves off 2 - 3 minutes / frame as a virtual machine.
>
>
> Anyway thanks for the comments.
> Question is there a way to have all my cores assigned to one task?
> I can easily dedicate the cores to a virtual machine but in a native
> Fedora environment I was wondering if I can get all cores to work on one
> task.
>
>
> And one other question.
>
> What software are you using for your render cluster?
>
>
> Way back in the Amiga days I was using Renderman as a rendering farm and
> the Screamernet for the Video Toaster.
>
> I have been doing some experimentation with Blender and it looks very
> good but I'm still looking at Lightwave 9 as the best. It is only ported
> for Windows though making it a pain as I would like very much to use a
> native linux enviroment.
>
>
> It also seems that Lightwave butterfly netrender for linux is here
>
> http://www.weez.com/2010/08/linux-lightwave-render-farm-getting-bnr-butterfly-netrender-to-work-in-debian-possibly-others/
>
>
>
>
> We shall see!!!!
>
>
>
>
You can - but indirectly.
if the process is multithreaded and you want all the cores working on
those threads, then
when you start up the process:
sudo nice -n -10 ProcessPathName

will very likely force all threads get on-core before other threads.

Danger: There are some system processes that MIGHT get preempted by such
a low priority. Se you need to research to see at what priority (nice
level) are all the system tasks running.

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JD wrote:
> On 08/09/2010 01:37 PM, Michael Miles wrote:
>
>> Kwan Lowe wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Michael Miles<mmamiga6@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Well, 3D animation is my thing and has been since the Amiga platform.
>>>> The power to render many minutes of animation and still have functional
>>>> machine to do the rest of my daily activity.
>>>>
>>>> I use a virtual machine running windows 7 for my animation software and
>>>> if I want to convert a HD movie at the same time as I do everything else
>>>> it shows a definite slow down.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I run a 4-node rendering cluster ( dual quad-cores on each, or 32
>>> cores total and 16G RAM each node). They're headless and just have
>>> minimal local disks. All nodes write via bonded 2 x 1Gb Ethernet to a
>>> fileserver, but network is usually not the bottleneck. When in use,
>>> CPUs are pegged for hours at a time. Modeling is done on a quad-core
>>> Windows 7 system with some relatively high-end ATI cards, but gets
>>> final render in the cluster. HD conversion is a minor step since the
>>> renders are done at final resolution.
>>>
>>> My point is that it may be more effective to separate your rendering
>>> hardware. I.e., you can buy a low-end desktop with decent video cards
>>> that will run your software natively *and* a separate, headless
>>> compute node that does all the heavy lifting rather than try to bulk
>>> up a desktop. The desktop will generally have crappy disk i/o, crappy
>>> memory limits (8G is average), crappy network (wireless or GBit), and
>>> your CPU will be busy drawing a pretty desktop than actually rendering
>>> frames.
>>>
>>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>> I have noticed a bit of a confusing issue.
>> Lightwave running under Win 7 as a virtual machine under Fedora 12 runs
>> faster than a native Win 7 machine.
>> Strange but true.
>>
>> It easily shaves off 2 - 3 minutes / frame as a virtual machine.
>>
>>
>> Anyway thanks for the comments.
>> Question is there a way to have all my cores assigned to one task?
>> I can easily dedicate the cores to a virtual machine but in a native
>> Fedora environment I was wondering if I can get all cores to work on one
>> task.
>>
>>
>> And one other question.
>>
>> What software are you using for your render cluster?
>>
>>
>> Way back in the Amiga days I was using Renderman as a rendering farm and
>> the Screamernet for the Video Toaster.
>>
>> I have been doing some experimentation with Blender and it looks very
>> good but I'm still looking at Lightwave 9 as the best. It is only ported
>> for Windows though making it a pain as I would like very much to use a
>> native linux enviroment.
>>
>>
>> It also seems that Lightwave butterfly netrender for linux is here
>>
>> http://www.weez.com/2010/08/linux-lightwave-render-farm-getting-bnr-butterfly-netrender-to-work-in-debian-possibly-others/
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> We shall see!!!!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
> You can - but indirectly.
> if the process is multithreaded and you want all the cores working on
> those threads, then
> when you start up the process:
> sudo nice -n -10 ProcessPathName
>
> will very likely force all threads get on-core before other threads.
>
> Danger: There are some system processes that MIGHT get preempted by such
> a low priority. Se you need to research to see at what priority (nice
> level) are all the system tasks running.
>
>

That does work but yes, the system had a bird as soon as I pressed enter
If I wanted to say use 3 out of 4 on a single process and use the 4th
free core for the system how would I go about that?

Thank you by the way!!!


Michael


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On 08/09/2010 03:23 PM, Michael Miles wrote:
> JD wrote:
>> On 08/09/2010 01:37 PM, Michael Miles wrote:
>>
>>> Kwan Lowe wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 1:52 PM, Michael Miles<mmamiga6@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> Well, 3D animation is my thing and has been since the Amiga platform.
>>>>> The power to render many minutes of animation and still have functional
>>>>> machine to do the rest of my daily activity.
>>>>>
>>>>> I use a virtual machine running windows 7 for my animation software and
>>>>> if I want to convert a HD movie at the same time as I do everything else
>>>>> it shows a definite slow down.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> I run a 4-node rendering cluster ( dual quad-cores on each, or 32
>>>> cores total and 16G RAM each node). They're headless and just have
>>>> minimal local disks. All nodes write via bonded 2 x 1Gb Ethernet to a
>>>> fileserver, but network is usually not the bottleneck. When in use,
>>>> CPUs are pegged for hours at a time. Modeling is done on a quad-core
>>>> Windows 7 system with some relatively high-end ATI cards, but gets
>>>> final render in the cluster. HD conversion is a minor step since the
>>>> renders are done at final resolution.
>>>>
>>>> My point is that it may be more effective to separate your rendering
>>>> hardware. I.e., you can buy a low-end desktop with decent video cards
>>>> that will run your software natively *and* a separate, headless
>>>> compute node that does all the heavy lifting rather than try to bulk
>>>> up a desktop. The desktop will generally have crappy disk i/o, crappy
>>>> memory limits (8G is average), crappy network (wireless or GBit), and
>>>> your CPU will be busy drawing a pretty desktop than actually rendering
>>>> frames.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I have noticed a bit of a confusing issue.
>>> Lightwave running under Win 7 as a virtual machine under Fedora 12 runs
>>> faster than a native Win 7 machine.
>>> Strange but true.
>>>
>>> It easily shaves off 2 - 3 minutes / frame as a virtual machine.
>>>
>>>
>>> Anyway thanks for the comments.
>>> Question is there a way to have all my cores assigned to one task?
>>> I can easily dedicate the cores to a virtual machine but in a native
>>> Fedora environment I was wondering if I can get all cores to work on one
>>> task.
>>>
>>>
>>> And one other question.
>>>
>>> What software are you using for your render cluster?
>>>
>>>
>>> Way back in the Amiga days I was using Renderman as a rendering farm and
>>> the Screamernet for the Video Toaster.
>>>
>>> I have been doing some experimentation with Blender and it looks very
>>> good but I'm still looking at Lightwave 9 as the best. It is only ported
>>> for Windows though making it a pain as I would like very much to use a
>>> native linux enviroment.
>>>
>>>
>>> It also seems that Lightwave butterfly netrender for linux is here
>>>
>>> http://www.weez.com/2010/08/linux-lightwave-render-farm-getting-bnr-butterfly-netrender-to-work-in-debian-possibly-others/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> We shall see!!!!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> You can - but indirectly.
>> if the process is multithreaded and you want all the cores working on
>> those threads, then
>> when you start up the process:
>> sudo nice -n -10 ProcessPathName
>>
>> will very likely force all threads get on-core before other threads.
>>
>> Danger: There are some system processes that MIGHT get preempted by such
>> a low priority. Se you need to research to see at what priority (nice
>> level) are all the system tasks running.
>>
>>
> That does work but yes, the system had a bird as soon as I pressed enter
> If I wanted to say use 3 out of 4 on a single process and use the 4th
> free core for the system how would I go about that?
>
> Thank you by the way!!!
>
>
> Michael
>
>
To do that, you need a library interface or sysctl command line
that would "affine" the process and it's threads to
to a set of cpu's (I am not certain if there is granularity here
as far as selecting a subset of cores from a cpu).
I do not know if such lib call or sysctl command
exists for this purpose.
I was aware of it (library call) in the SVR4-smp kernel.
But it's been a long time and I do not recall the lib call.

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JD wrote:
>
> To do that, you need a library interface or sysctl command line
> that would "affine" the process and it's threads to
> to a set of cpu's (I am not certain if there is granularity here
> as far as selecting a subset of cores from a cpu).

JD and Michael,

Take a look at taskset:

taskset is used to set or retrieve the CPU affinity of a running
process given its PID or to launch a new COMMAND with a given CPU
affinity. CPU affinity is a scheduler property that "bonds" a
process to a given set of CPUs on the system. The Linux scheduler
will honor the given CPU affinity and the process will not run on
any other CPUs.

Regards,

Matthew Roth
InterMedia Marketing Solutions
Software Engineer and Systems Developer
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