[Tfug] CPU Query

[Robert Hunter]

> I wrote all the code, so I know exactly what it's doing (OK, so I didn't
> I want to know if
> paying a little more for a 2X CPU will gain me in throughput without my
> having to do anything other than copy codes over from my current FC3
> system and go.

Jim, to state the obvious: if you have a long, CPU-bound computation,
throwing more processing power at it is definitely going to help.  In
relation to a dual processor/dual core, you will at the very least have a
dedicated processor to your computation, while the other one can deal
with "OS stuff".  You would almost certainly get a bigger gain by
introducing parallelism into your code. E.g., with threads,
auto-parallelizing compilers, libraries such as scalapack, etc.  I can
understand why you would be reluctant to make such an investment of time
to retool, but in the long term it may very well pay off.  It looks like
the trend toward multicore processors is manifest.  Already Intel is
marketing quad cores, and AMD will soon follow.  I'm certain I will be
picking up some of AMD quads as soon as they come out.

P.S.  Whatever you decide, try to look for processor models with very
large caches.  If you are working with large martices, this will really
help.



-- 
Rob