SETI on Itanium?

[Greg M]

Has anybody ever tried running SETI on an Intel Itanium? If so, what were the average WU times?

Will be doing some evaluations on a 4-way Itanium server with 32GB of RAM at work with 64-bit .Net Server Beta 3 and was curious as to any available data points.

Thanks.

 

[TC]

I'm not aware of any client versions that will run on that platform under a 64 bit OS.

 

[Yodums]

I'm not aware of any client versions that will run on that platform under a 64 bit OS.

Yea.. As far as I know, the Itanium were discontinued. Also there probably won't be any 64bit OS until next January or something, that's when the Clawhammer's gets released.

Yodums

 

[Greg M]

Itanium is not discontinued. McKinley version soon to be released. SETI has 64 bit versions for Linux and Alpha Tru64. MS has a 64 bit Win2K, Ltd. Edition, and soon to be .Net Server.

I'm thinking SETI would suck running in a 32-bit emulation. It would probably rock with the ia64-Linux command line client.

 

[TC]

Yea.. As far as I know, the Itanium were discontinued. Also there probably won't be any 64bit OS until next January or something, that's when the Clawhammer's gets released.

Yodums

No the Itanium wasn't discontinued, and windows XP already has a 64 bit version available. Anyway I wouldn't waste any time trying to run it in 32 bit emulation. I don't think there's a client version that will run on the 64 bit version of XP, and I don't think any version of unix will run correctly on the Itanium. It would be interesting to see how it would fare with a properly ported 64 bit XP clc. The Itanium has some mad fpu specs.

 

[Greg M]

There is an IA64 version of Linux for the Itanium (IA64) processors. The 64-bit version of XP is a Workstation OS and only supports 2 CPU's.

 

[arkan]

believe it or not the itanium would end up being slower than a pentium 3 at the same speed unless u get one with a huge cache on board like they have planned for next year if u have that much money to blow and want to crunch seti go buy one of the 4 way alpha 1gig servers from compaq while they still have any left. this configuration rocks...as in mountains and currently holds the record for best i/o of any 4 way sstup in the world unless u start talking about vector processors

 

[TC]

believe it or not the itanium would end up being slower than a pentium 3 at the same speed unless u get one with a huge cache on board like they have planned for next year if u have that much money to blow and want to crunch seti go buy one of the 4 way alpha 1gig servers from compaq while they still have any left. this configuration rocks...as in mountains and currently holds the record for best i/o of any 4 way sstup in the world unless u start talking about vector processors

Yes if you were running it in 32 bit emulation mode. It smokes most desktop chips out there in native 64 bit mode. I think Greg wanted to try it out in 64 bit mode. 32 bit would be a waste of time.

 

[arkan]

itanium is still slower than most 64 bit chips it competes with such as sun and alpha why do u think it got the nickname itanic?

 

[jokrswild]

My guess is that as the mainstream computing world moves to 64 bit, Berkeley will keep up. They might release a 64 bit version in their next release. Or maybe just wait for SETI@Home 2.

 

[TC]

itanium is still slower than most 64 bit chips it competes with such as sun and alpha why do u think it got the nickname itanic?

I'm not sure what you're referring to - the 800MHz version is right up there with the latest ultra sparc III and alpha 21264 in spec2000. It got the name itanic because it's 32 bit emulation mode is such a joke, and it's so specialized that it doesn't make sense for most applications. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it rocks, but it does have a pretty impressive fpu.

 

[Greg M]

It's a quad 800mhz 4MB cache system with 32GB of RAM. 32 bit emulation mode would be counter-productive. It's a work eval, so I'm not going to go out and buy something else. I'm really hoping the Hammer chips will make 64-bit ubiquitous and prompt SETI to build a 64-bit Windows client.

Personally, I'm not sure IA-64 is going to take off. The platform will have to demonstrate significant performance gains above RISC processors to gain traction. Also, not many companies want to do a full scale replacement of software. If it does take off, the applications will probably be very vertical for quite some time.

The processors are huge, as well as the heatsinks, and there are enough fans to power a small aircraft. The trick is trying to get the correct power connections in the lab. It runs on 2 x 208V 30 amp circuits.

 

[TC]

I don't think it will catch on at all, but if I had the money to throw around I would get one just to have a look.

 

[Greg M]

If I had the money to throw around
...boy, would I like to have that problem.

 

[arkan]

an alpha 21264a does a floa6ing point op in 3 cycles an intanium takes over 5 that adds up bc the itanium gets less effecient as its speed increases and the alpha (thanks to superior design) remains clkoser to constant as it scales

 

[Greg M]

Just an update. We loaded TurboLinux and spooled up an IA64 SETI client per CPU. It churns them out in about 6 hours.

I could get more SETI crunching horsepower out of 4 Dell Latitude C610 1Ghz PIII-M laptops--total cost $6K. List price of a single Itanium 800mhz 4MB cache CPU--$7,349.00.

 

[TC]

Just an update. We loaded TurboLinux and spooled up an IA64 SETI client per CPU. It churns them out in about 6 hours.

I could get more SETI crunching horsepower out of 4 Dell Latitude C610 1Ghz PIII-M laptops--total cost $6K. List price of a single Itanium 800mhz 4MB cache CPU--$7,349.00.

That's odd - somebody at work talked with a contact in the Netherlands branch that has one. It was spitting them out in just under 1 hour. I'll have to see what the specs are.

 

[arkan]

its impossible for itanium to spit out a work unit in less than an hour the itanium is horribly ineffecient it would take something on the scale of an ibm power 4 cpu to do that sort of crunching and even then i doubt it could do it in less than an hour

 

[TC]

its impossible for itanium to spit out a work unit in less than an hour the itanium is horribly ineffecient it would take something on the scale of an ibm power 4 cpu to do that sort of crunching and even then i doubt it could do it in less than an hour

I'm certain he was talking about native 64 bit optimized code. At that it's just slightly behind an alpha 21264. I would think in 32 bit mode it would take upwards of 10 hours.

 

[arkan]

im a programming student and we get to use intanium for testing purposes even in native 64 biut the itanium couldnt do a work unit in less than an hour and by the way an alpha 21264c smokes the itanium in 64 bit and they are up to 1 ghz

the itanium isnt very effeicient at crunching numbers its mainly good for anything that needs tons of throughput such as ecommerece servers where spedd isnt as important and the load it can handle in 32 bit mode the itanium would take way more than 10 hours be it has to emulate 32 bits and ends up taking as many cpu tics as pre pentioum cpus when doing floating point or anything like seti this ive got back up on as the author of setispy even gives u the number of cycles it takes to do a flop on the itanium