[vtkusers] Choice of PC's

[Dave Reed]

> X-Sender: krunner4 at pop.nycap.rr.com
> Date: Wed, 07 Feb 2001 11:45:40 -0500
> From: Will Schroeder <will.schroeder at kitware.com>
> Cc: jdb54 at pantheon-po01.its.yale.edu, vtkusers at public.kitware.com
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> 
> Most every imaging filter is multithreaded. Volume rendering is 
> multithreaded. A few
> graphics filters are multithreaded. There is a new parallel directory in 
> the nightly releases that supports MPI...so you can execute pipelines in 
> parallel.
> 
> IMHO, from what little I know about the performance of the higher-speed 
> processors, it seems that having two lower-speed processors is 
> better...there seem to be memory/bus bottlenecks that prevent many systems 
> from realizing their full clock-speed potential. You can check this out be 
> looking at benchmarks on the web.
> 
> Will

<earlier messages snipped>

Great!  I thought you were working on multithreading based on job
postings last year, but didn't know it was up and running already.

Yes, I would agree that the memory/bus seems to be the limiting factor
on high end machines.  The only other question (and I don't know the
answer) is: Will two lower speed processors also saturate the memory
just as much as one higher speed processor?  Obviously it depends on
the applications running and the actual architecture of the dual
processor boards which I don't know enough about..

I just wanted to make certain the original poster realized that dual
processors don't help much unless the application takes advantage of
dual processors (or you're running multiple applications or multiple
instances of one application at the same time).  I've seen too many
people who don't understand that.

Dave