Hi,

I've gotten mother boards with just
one CPU and I hear folks talking about boards with "Quad" processors. Is it possible to arrange 'mobo's'with quad CPU's say, 16 CPU's? I don't know that you could run them together in parallel but if you COULD, think of all the calculations that could do in a minute, LOL!

I don't know if the term 'Beawolf'
is used much these days, just imaging
a whole network of quad processors.

If it would work, it would certainly
give me an 'edge' in doing antenna configurations with NEC-II :-)
While the computer's CPU's run in
the backgrould, I could play "Solitaire" or "Majong"

Respectfully submitted,
Regards,
"Brother Buck"

This is a formal notice that at no time were any lawyers harmed.

Almost all processors these days have more than one core. You're probably already doing this right now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetric_multiprocessing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_%28computing%29

We used to build processor boards with 48 processors on it. Then we'd stack those boards in cabinets so that the total would end up being pretty high. Some of them were used for air traffic control systems. We needed to be darn sure of every calculations so most of that was 8 way redundant.

We currently use mini supercomputers in about 250 locations across the US just to decode images. Each one is site designed but may range from 100 processors to maybe 800 or more. Many companies everyday use specialized systems that are built as one of a kind for their use. These systems are all parallel processing.

Your antenna work has been done decades ago by the military. Although antenna and propagation was known way before, there are still some needs for models for various reasons. (classified)

This NEC deal is so old, you can't use it on modern equipment without more of a brute force. If it were updated to maybe gpu rendering you could create a system just for this. Until then a fast processor that is good with arithmetic would be the best choice.

Look, you can't afford the board with the most CPUs, so why waste time asking about that? In addition, there are lots of versions of NEC, and I can't see a single one of them that would take advantage of multiple cpus (although, I'm not an expert, so you may have already identified some particular version that has been re-engineered for parallel computation) so having more CPUs probably wouldn't do you any good, apart from keeping you warm in the cooler parts of the year (unless, maybe, you are running several instances of NEC, and you have written some controlling code that optimises the outcomes to evolve new designs...that would work).

Also, you need to be clear about the difference between 'sockets' and 'cpus'; given that there are the obvious '6 cpus per socket' solutions, you might have enough cpus without buying a multi-socket board, but if you have got the big budget I am sure that you can find a solution tom keep your local Utility very happy. And why stick at one motherboard? A rack of 1 U servers....and that'll still be less computing power than Google adds every week. But then, they do have a problem that can take advantage of parallel computation.

Honest answer-

The most cores you can get on a single board that I know of is wlike this-

TYAN S8812 (4 x G34 sockets)
http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec...&SKU=600000180

AMD Opteron G34 6200 series 'Interlagos', 16 cores per G34 socket
http://www.amd.com/us/products/serve...rocessors.aspx

Thats probably just a newer version of the sort of systems that jefro posted about (I'd guess that was 4 x 'Magny-cours' 12 core opterons)

But like salasi said, you cant afford that sort of setup. For that sort of setup I you are looking at $800+ for the board, 4 x $550 for the cheapest 'Interlagos' CPUs. So $3000 US without RAM, power suply, case, etc.. The ECC RAM used with the TYAN S8812 is about twice the cost of 'nronmal' RAM. Its going to need a non-standard case, those boards are H-U-G-E, and so on.

You'll end up having to spend about $4000-4500 minimum. Now for the reason why you shouldnt, even if you've got the money.

Real answer-

Like verigoth posted, multi-core CPUs are common now. In fact, you have to look around to find single core CPUs now, and they are the cheapest things you can get. 4core CPUs are pretty much standard, 6/8 core CPUs are still cheap, normal desktop parts now.

If salasi and jefro are right, and I am reading the posts correctly, having multipule cores isnt going to help with NEC-II (unless you are running multipule instances of it anyway).

The 'server' CPUs you have to use to run multipule CPU socket systems are slower than normal desktop CPUs when you run single core only code, or even multicore capable code that wont use more cores than your CPU has. Most servers arent made to run one application fast, they are made to run many applications (or many instances of one aplication) reliably and without errors.

For example, the AMD Opteron 6272 (16 core 'Interlagos') is a 2.1GHz chip. It might have 16 cores, but if your application is single core only, you get 1 x 2.1GHz. It would be slower than a AMD Phenom II 4/6 core or 'Bulldozer 4/6/8 core CPU, or the intel i5/i7 4/6 core CPUs which tend to run at 3GHz+. BTW, I am fudging things a little, the server CPUs tend to have more cahce on the CPU and that does help performance, but it wont make up for the loss of clock speed.

With modern multi core CPUs, you should be able to run NEC-II (or most anything else) in the background and still be able to play solitaire, majong or even much more demanding games without any problems.

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Hi All,

I think there might be some confusion as to MY meaning of a
socket is and y'all's definition of a socket is.

To me, a socket is the multiple pins lock-down cpu holder, like
a Socket 7 (or more modern). The CPU plugs into the physical
socket on the Mother board. I believe what your's is the number
of CPU's within the CPU chip.

Now, if you take a quad-core, that would be 4 processors in the
cpu chip. Take that, and add another socket and that
would give you and 8-core processors, add 2 more and that would
give you 16 processors. So, shouldn't your computer run 16 times as fast? I'm just 'day-dreaming' here, now. IF you kept adding set-ups like this wouldn't this be like a CRAY computer?

How about hooking up RISC computers?

IF what you say is TRUE, no, I can't afford your kind of set-up.
Maybe one day, but not today, LOL!

Respectfully submitted,
Regards,

"Uncle Buck".....Yes, I'm the crazy Uncle your family never talks about, he,he,he.

As far as I can tell, we are all using (nearly) the correct definition of a socket, so if you are using a different one, you're wrong.

(Nearly = S 775 isn't really a socket, but earlier sockets are, but people still refer to s 775 as a socket, even though that is technically incorrect.)

No, I think we all have a socket as the thing into which an individual thing, an SKU, if you like, that you buy from a PC retailer plugs. Practically all 'consumer' motherboards are single socket (there have been multiple socket consumer boards, such as the infamous Abit BP6, but they have never had all that much market share in the consumer space...different in the server space, of course, where multi-socket boards are very common).

On the other hand, over the past 5 years, or so, even in the consumer space devices that you buy from the PC retailer as a single item has commonly had more than one core. That is, two, or more, programs can execute genuinely simultaneously, as opposed to giving the illusion of simultaneity by switching between several programs quite quickly.

This is a multi-core cpu, and things like a Core2Duo and multi-core Phenoms are of this nature..

I'll try to be subtle about this: No, no, no, no, no. (at least to a general 16x speedup).

If you have a single program, and you haven't taken special measures (and, by special measures, I'm including some things that are impossible in particular cases) then the program will run roughly no faster. No faster.

Your single program will run on one of the cores, and will leave the other cores unused and will therefore run at the old speed, and you have spent money on cores that you aren't using.

(The slight exception here is that with a single core, you'll also be doing some 'housekeeping'; eg, cron jobs, and the like. With two, or more, cores, the housekeeping will be on another core; with a solitary core, there is only one core on which it can run, so it runs on that core, and you lose maybe 5% or more throughput to the housekeeping, so looked at in a simple minded way, you'll get a 5% speedup in the execution time of your main program from having more cores. The actual number may well be more than 5%, but whatever the number is, that's the speedup you'll get from anywhere from 2 to an infinite number of cores. You won't afford an infinite number of cores, and will be disappointed with the result.)

In principle, RISC or not-RISC makes no difference to this argument

• the above argument still applies; there is still a number of cores and it still helps (or doesn't) in the same way
• and anyway, there really isn't anything that is purely RISC anymore; there are certainly processors that are more RISC-like and ones that are less RISC-like

What does make a difference is that if you buy your computers from Sun or IBM (who happen to be RISC(-mostly) architecture vendors...but then, so are MIPS) you can spend way more money on cores and surrounding hardware than you can on consumer x86 boxes.

Still, if you've got lots of cores, you can run lots of different threads (programs) without them competing (as much) for cores. But, this doesn't mean that any program that cannot take advantage of multiple simultaneous threads runs any faster.

(Note also that this simple-minded analysis doesn't take account of the fact that with 'many cores', there is competition for other resources (disk, network, busses, whatever), and so this leads to the speed up being less dramatic than was originally predicted. And that's after having predicted nearly zero speed up.)

So, why do people want multiple cores in the server space? Well, they are trying to run lots of different programs simultaneously (pseudo-simultaneously would do fine, too). So, if you have 1000 threads running on your server, and you have a hundred cores, you only have to run 10 threads on each core (replace those 10s, hundreds and thousands by nice, even divisable, binary numbers, if you prefer).

That can be quite easily preferable to running 1000 threads on one core, even if it is quite a good core.

But, just because it works for lots of separate threads, does not mean that a single thread has the potential to run any faster, because you have more cores than you can use.

1 members found this post helpful.

You could have any supercomputer but the software you have may not even support more than one processor.

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anyway if you have 16 CPUs they'll spend most of their life hanging
around waiting for the disk to get round to them.
Plus the RAM of course, if they share variables the CPU cache has to be synchronized with the RAM blah blah. More time spent shuffling stuff about.

And writing software is a real pain because it becomes non deterministic.
I work with real data and it has to be correct, coding and debugging multiple threads
just is not worth the time and effort. CPUs are so fast now it's easier to keep it simple.



I daresay stuff like weather modelling needs it but I would guess they have a massive team
of brilliant engineers working on it.

1 members found this post helpful.

Nah. I'll put it a different way to salasi.

Lots of jobs (in fact all, in some ways) your computer is doing is simply arithmetic.

Programs tend to process information, then run more processing on the 1st result. So you get jobs like this-

16 x 2 = 32
32 + 7 = 39.
39 - 3 = 36
36 / 12 = 12.

Answer = 12.

There is now way for the program to run all those tasks at the same time. So no mater how many cores you have, it wont run any faster.

Some programs will be running 2 or more sets of arithmetic at the same time. In those cases, having more cores will help....up to the point where you run out of jobs that are not dependant on other jobs.

Nope. Adding cores will give you more processing power, but its not like a cray or other supercomputers.

Currently, 4-8 core, single socket desktop systems are affordable ($1000-1500 or less) and powerfull.

You dont want to have more than 6-8 cores as a desktop user. Its not going to help you in most cases.

If you could add tons of cores and get better performance, gamers would be using 16 core opteron server CPUs, they are about the same cost as the cheapest LGA 2011 6 core i7 desktop CPU. But for games, once you go past about 4 cores, performance doesnt increase. That is also true of most programs, even those that are mutlicore capable, and almost all the programs you will run on the desktop.

I believe that technically LGA 775 is a socket. Intel has refered to LGA 775, LGA 1156, LGA 1155, LGA 1366 and LGA 2011 as a sockets consistently.

Even if that wasnt the case, IMO it makes sense to just call a CPU mount a 'socket' these days, even if its not really a socket (eg, old slot one/slot A/slot two systems, and new AMD 'Fusion' and Intel 'Atom' systems where the CPU is mounted to the board permanently). Its easier than using both 'CPU' and 'processor' like mircosoft has been know to do. Its too easy to mix up CPUs, processors and cores, and will just get more complex as GPGPU use becomes more common.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi "Guys" and "Gals",

I was just "day-dreaming" about this, but I'm glad to know
the information. With NEC-II I would run it as a single
program. I know others that use it in designing antennas.
I've done it the old-fshion way: formulas and calculating
on paper, LOL.

I'm trying to figure out if I still want to use a dual-core
Asus board I have or just outright buy a whole, new desktop
computer. One thing I do want is a tower case and
NO side window. The tower case will
go under my Operatiing Desk. I already know what the
insides will look like, so I don't need to see it again, LOL!
The tower case should have a lot of 5¼" slots for a CD R/W/R,
a DVD R/W/R, a 5¼" floppy for a disk drive and 3½" floppy and
LOTS of room for fans and air flow. I prefer black cases
with a more than adaquate power supply to run everything.

I have a TON of old floppies that have DOS programs on them
and would like to keep the information on a hard drive.

Again, I "Thank ALL of you" for your kindness and help. I'm
going to have to wait until after the 1st when my check comes
in, but I'm ordering a 2 gigs of PC-2700 Ram for the Dell
and get Xbuntu on this one. If it seems to do the work, then I'll start saving for the new desktop.

Respectfully submitted,
Regards,

"Buck"

To be frank, when I wrote that I thought 'and if the OP does not understand this, I'll write a simple piece of pseudo-code doing lots of simple math to show that it is impossible to speed up general bits of code by adding more cores'. So, thanks for doing that, otherwise I'd have had to do it.


I'd have put the number at more like 2-4 for most users doing desktop tasks, most of the time. But, in general, something like diminishing returns sets in very quickly.

Some games show speed up going to eight cores above four (mostly programs that can split the 'game strategy' from 'games phys' and throw several cores at each - you know, the ones that have hundreds of zombies and they have loads of independent calculations to do, and do that, essentially, in parallel with all of the whizz-bang graphics, and that really isn't anything like the usual computation problem), some don't.

For it to be a true socket, a bit, the male part, has to fit into a female bit. s775 doesn't do that; it isn't really relevant to the discussion of cores, though.

1 members found this post helpful.

If its using PC-2700, its pretty old. A newer CPU/RAM/motherboard setup would be a lot faster, even if its a dual core CPU. (BTW, before you get the idea, no, you cant just check the rated MHz of your daul core and compare that to newer CPUs. The newer CPUs are faster, even with less core MHz)

No window, easy.

Even if you plan on having a CD-RW, DVD-RW and 5.25'' floppy, you still only need 3 5.25'' slots. Getting more is easy, but its just going to make your case bigger..and probably the cost as well.

IMO you dont want a case with tons of fans. You can get some cases now with more fans than a lot of bands. But those cases are made for serious overclockers and gamers.

The highest TDP (thermal design power) desktop CPUs you can get now are 125watts. Overclocking can lead to major increases in the heat output. A 'normal' video card wil probably have 30-75 watts TDP, 'serious' gamers cards can have a TDP of 200watts+, and its possible to run 2-3 200watt TDP video cards in one computer.

So where a fast computer with a 'normal' video card will have to get rid of about 200 watts of heat (125 for the CPU, 25 for the motherboard, HDD/DVD and RAM, 50 for the video card), some crazy overclocked computer with multipule cards could have 650+ watts of heat to dissipate. Even 400watts TDP needs a lot more airflow than 200watts TDP....

IMO the most fans you want in a case is 3-4 120mm or bigger fans. 2 fans at the front, to let air in. I ALWAYS try to get cases with an airfilter on teh front fans, to stop dust and grit getting into the case. 1-2 fans at the back, to let out the heated air. That is more than you need.

The cases that have huge nubers of fans normally have side panel fans, and/or top fans. IMO the side fans are just a pain in most cases, and the top fan mounts are bad. If you dont put a fan in the top mounts, dust gets into the system.

BTW, I live in a hot climate, have a 80-125watts TDP CPU (depends on how many cores I am using, I can 'unlock' my dual core to a quad core) and a 50watt TDP video card. I'm running 2 fans, 1 x 92mm fan at the front, and 1 x 120mm fan at the back, and the 120mm fan is running very slowly. I've never overheated this system.

In that case, I'd keep the 5.25'' and probably even the 3.5'' floppy drives in your old computer. Copy the stuff on the floppies to a USB flash drive or external HDD and transfer them.

I only used 6-8 because of the AMD Phenom II X6 and 'Bulldozer' CPUs. If you discount AMD, 4 max IMO. The 6 core intel LGA 1366 and LGA 2011 systems arent worth the extra cost IMO.

I've heard that, but never seen a benchmark that showed it. A few came close, untill you start really pulling the benchmarking apart.

I dont see why a socket has to have pins on the CPU. I've seen a lot of debate about it, but so far no one has showed me any technical reason why LGA isnt a socket.

BTW, I used to be in the 'LGA isnt a socket' camp, until I started having a good look for technical reasons why it wasnt a socket. I put my 'its not a socket' down to knee jerk reaction to LGA 775 (I'm not saying that you are doing that salasi). I still dont like LGA for various reasons.

Not that it matters much anyway. Socket, not socket, whatever is right, I wish that someone would just come up with a technical guide to what a 'socket' is, then slap microsoft until they fix the 'processors/cores/CPUs' annoyance.