The question was :
At equal "specs", is there any reason
why I should have more cpu of less processing power
instead of less cpus but each being more powerful.
(looking to upgrade to EV6 processors)
Of the 5 responses I got, most suggested that a workload
consisting of many processes, more cpu would tend
to give a better throughput.
My opinion after digging more on the subject:
Obviously, that is not always the case, multiuser
workload benchmarks prove otherwise. There is a
threshold at which a system with less but more powerful
cpus outperforms one with more but less powerful cpus.
>From the benchmark figures I gathered, I think that the EV6
vs EV5 breaks that threshold.
Also, going beyond 4 cpus, the overhead to manage SMP
seems to be quite important and return on investment is
thinner (for the 8400 at least).
Finally, in the papers discussing smp implementations,
it says that smp was developed to provide a **cost-effective**
means of increasing the computing power of a server (instead of
replacing it) as opposed to be "throughput effective".
Daniel Gagne
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Received on Thu Dec 16 1999 - 02:55:45 NZDT