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Ask Slashdot: Finding Quad Pentium II Motherboards?
Another member of Clan Anonymous Coward writes in with this
question:
"I have been looking for a quad pII board but have yet to
actually find one. If you know where I can find one, send
me an email to wakko@animx.eu.org. Please send all 'pII's
sucks amd rocks' messages to /dev/null."
Everybody seems to (whenever SMP comes up on
Slashdot) answer with "it's neat, but you're
better off just going with 2 1-cpu boxes."
While it may be true that the cost is lower for
just the CPU and motherboard, what about the cost
of 2 40GB RAID arrays? (One for each server).
And the hundreds of megabytes of memory for each
server. Plus the pricey cases with LED displays
on the front that show processor fan RPM and
redundant power supplies. It certainly is
cheaper to make 2 low-end boxes with just anything
thrown in them, where the CPU is the only concern.
But high-end servers (and I would assume a 4-way
box, while not really high end, is certainly not
end userish level) have a lot more hardware in
them that's expensive than just the processor and
motherboard..
[if i posted more than once in a year i might
make an account]
In order to run SMP, you have to recompile your kernel, but it's not an ordeal by any means. In the new 2.2 kernels, it's actually an option in make {X,menu}config. While generally speaking, SMP kernels will work on UP boxen, you're going to have some amount of overhead (probably no more than 30%), and so it's good to only compile SMP kernels on SMP boxen.
If your using Windows NT, it probably won't see big gains, AFAIK, it's SMP isn't that great.
If your using Linux (or another *NIX) then your dilluting yourself if your thinking about Quad PIII's insted of something like a SGI Origin, or a Sparc, or even an AIX box...
I guess I don't see any reason to TRY to get a quad Intel box, so, that's probably why there aren't many.
+$30 for the board, then the new CPU. But, that's dual.
We're talking quad, and quad boards AFAIK are rare, Xeon only, and in the $1,000+ not $100 area.
Dual PII's fill the gap between Intel and "true workstation hardware" (forgive the term), but when you go to the quad price range, the tables turn.
Plus, unfortunately, Intel systems don't seem to have the "lifetime" of Sun's, SGI's, IBM AIX, and DEC systems. I haven't seen many 5+ year old systems fail in that group. But, I have seen some pretty "dead" intel boxes scattered in the back rooms of labs.
I suggest you price both systems before you buy... We just pulled in an Origin and an Octane at work, when initally we were just shopping for a Dual PII box. We priced the systems with what we would need, and it seemed that the SGI's were going to really thump the Intel's in that price range.
Now, Dealing with IRIX as opposed to Linux, I would pick Linux 10 to 1 anyday. It's just plain easier to work with (system admin wise).
But you really better get a good idea of what a Quad PIII like this guy was asking is going to cost before you say Intell is cheap. Let's look really fast at just this... Pricewatch (cheapest you will find a PIII CPU) shows lowest price on A PIII 500 at $634/each. That makes the total $2,536 for CPU's alone, not counting the motherboard, RAM, case, etc.. etc... And your not planning on stuffing this all in a $18 bargian basement case, are you? $100 for a case, probably $400-$600 for a mother board (IF you find one), $100 for a vid card, etc etc... Your talking about $3,000+ EASY, probably $4,000 easy.
Then call SGI, Sun, IBM, and Alpha retailers, and see what you can get for the same money. Check Memory I/O, Mega/Giga-flops, SPECS, and I think you will see, we're not playing in Intel's field anymore.
Aside from that, I would take the people mentioning that you can't do Quad PII or PIII seriously, unless it has been confirmed otherwise. I think the Xeon is the only one that might do Quad... If I am wrong on anything, it's that..
But as for bang for the buck, Intel nicely fills the gap between AMD's and the Big Boy's in UNIX with it's Duals, but after that, it's out of it's league.
Quad Intel is (IMHO) a very expensive way to go, and in this situation, it's hard to discuss, because the question never mentioned the use of the box, so I don't know if needing Intel is a consideration...
I have seen articals about a few tricks that are needed to make Celerons into Dual'able. So, that may be a bit of bang. But I don't know if it's possable HERE Pricewatch shows it's dual boards, and they ain't cheap, and it seems only Xeon boards are listed.
I would tend to say, go with the dual Celeron tricks if your very technically inclined, go with dual PII's if your not, and if you want more, look at non-Intel options.
VA Research is definately going to be the place to go to see just how much you can get an Intel box to do. They are running at the commercial limits of possabilities with Intel systems. If they don't have it, I would be doubtfull of it's existance. But if you notice the prices (*Which are reasonable considering the quality of componants*), they start playing into the SUN/SGI price range with thier bigger systems.
I know the writer asked about Intel, so this is OT more than the AMD SMP (K7) posts, but as someone with one foot in both the x86 and PPC world just throught I'd drop this..
:-/
Known fact: The PPC G3 (750) does not fully support SMP, there are cache issues. An exception is what the Amiga guys did with the 4way G3 box, but it's still a hack because the CPU doesn't fully exploit SMP (there are cache-related SMP instructions needed that are not there). FYI the G3 is based on a PPC 603e... a notebook chip, but this revision has really good integer (FP is decent... still stomps Intel tho).
The G4, which is based on the PPC 604; both support what's needed for SMP. G4 is 64-bit - initially it will be configured with some compromises on the _motherboard_ so it's a "drop in" to G3 setups. Then there's AltiVec vector processing, 128-bit, which UNLIKE MMX can be executed in paralell with the FPU.
FYI - if you can find multi-processor 604e Macs, like the 9600MP or a Daystay 4-way @ 200MHz, they're supposed to make bitchen Linux boxes. Or so I hear... *I* don't have one.
intel didn't design the pentuim II to be used in quad config, its only single or dual, the ones that do quad is the PPro , xeon, PIII, or PIIIxeon
Nuff said.
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
SB.
The first real problem with cheap smp was solved when intel developed and patented APIC. This structure has half of the interrupt control needed on the cpu, half in the chipset or auxillary chip like the iS82093AA.
Intel would not license this to AMD or Cyrix so they developed their own OpenPIC standard which the 6x86 and K5 supported. When AMD bought NexGen for their 6th generation design which evolved into the K6, it had no OpenPIC support and it wasn't worth the cost to add. Via did have OpenPIC support in atleast one version of chipset, but I never found a motherboard implementing SMP with it. Linux does indeed support OpenPIC SMP, but only on the PowerPC processors ( see linux/openpic.h). With only Cyrix having processor support for Openpic with the passing of the K5, and intel not letting anyone else make APIC compatible stuff, well, intel is the only SMP game for x86 systems. But OpenPIC was practical and robust enough for Motorola and IBM to make it a foundational part of the whole PowerPC line.
Sad really when you look at the unrelenting control that intel uses on the PC industry to maintain an environment that suits their needs at the expense of everything else.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I priced this, and have kept up with it, and as a result, I have two PII/300's in my box . Quad CPU's are more expensive, but Duals aren't. When I bought this box (late August '98), all other componenets the same, the SMP mobo and two 300MHz chips was cheaper than a single processor board and a 400MHz chip.
/me can't wait for SMP K-7 boards
-Cheetah
I thought the PII only supported 2-way SMP.
I was reading that SMP Celeron page, and based on what I learned about SMP there, it seems that the PII is only 2-way by design.
True, some ugly hardware hacks on the motherboard could overcome that, but the performance would likely be less than wonderful.
Think of it this way:
Pentium II is the follow-on to Pentium. It can't
do more than 2-way MP because of the way it talks
to its address bus and chipset.
Pentium III is the follow-on to Pentium II, and has the same limitations.
Pentium {II,III} Xeon is the follow-on to Pentium Pro. Pentium Pro can do 8-way MP because it was designed to access its bus and chipset in a more rational manner. Xeon carries much the same design forward, and so can do 8-way MP.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
To answer your question, yes, it is possible to have a four way SMP machine using the Pentium II processor but you wont find such a motherboard. The CPU is not the limiting factor, it's the motherboard "core logic" chipset. Quick review:
Intel 440LX supports one or two Pentium II CPUs (slot 1) with a 66MHz front side bus. Chipset is features an SDRAM memory controller and a dual PCI bridge - one 33Mhz 32 bit PCI, and one 66Mhz 32 bit AGP with 2x mode.
Intel 440BX supports one or two Pentium II CPUs (slot 1) with a 66 or 100MHz front side bus. Chipset features an SDRAM memory controller and a dual PCI bridge - one 33MHz 32 bit PCI, and one 66MHz 32 bit AGP with 2x mode.
Intel 440NX supports up to eight Xeon CPUs (slot 2) with a 100MHz front side bus. Chipset features a four way interleaved SDRAM controller and a dual PCI bridge - one 66MHz 32 bit PCI, and one 33MHz 64 bit PCI. NO AGP!
Now, the first two chipsets are the "cheap" consumer variety. The third chipset is the expensive server variety which is fairly obvious as it supports up to 8 CPUs, four way memory interleave, and offers a 64 bit PCI bus. The trade off is that you don't get an AGP slot - but that isn't needed on a server anyway. It's also intended for slot 2 (Xeon) CPU's. Now, technically, you could design a board with the NX chipset that supported 4 slot 1 CPUs - but there probably wouldn't be much of a market - and Intel doesn't want you to do that anyway. (They might not sell you the chipset at all if they thought you were going to use it for slot 1 designs.)
I studied these companies' offerings in detail about a month ago, when I wondered how much a really _good_ multiprocessor system costs.
The answer is about $30k+ for something like a quad box, and about $100k+ for something with more respectable performance.
I've heard people quote high single-digit $k for Alpha boxen, but I'm still suspicious as to what's on the motherboard.
From what I found, both IBM and SGI had horrible price/performance ratios (for what I was looking for; my primary concern was FP performance). Sun systems were ok, but the real winner from what I could tell was HP. They sell PA-RISC 8500 boxen with large numbers of processors and respectable cache for a (relatively) reasonable price. They have a pricing sheet on their web site, though you have to dig a fair bit for it. Some of the manufacturers give Spec figures, but it's still a good idea to stop by spec.org to find out what the performance of some of the boxen listed actually ends up being.
What I concluded from the survey was that I'm better off spending $10k (Canadian) and buying 15 K62-400 boxen. The problems that I want to solve are easily compartmentalized.
A cluster, OTOH, has to stuff all inter-processor communications through a network cable. This works quite well for easily compartmentalized problems that don't need much access to shared memory. However, if you had a large chunk of memory that you wanted each processor to be able to do more or less random locking, reading, and modification on, your network will go into meltdown. Especially if this memory is distributed over many boxes (i.e. each box contains a part of the very large whole instead of each box mirroring all of a smaller shared memory block).
Myself, when I buy the machine of my dreams, I'll probably go the clustering route. There are plenty of problems that I'd like to play with that don't have unreasonable communications loads, and it is one heck of a lot cheaper to build a cluster for something like that than to pay through the nose for big iron (or even medium-sized aluminum).
Note that you can buy a "Pentium Pro Overdrive" chip, which is essentially a 333Mhz Xeon that fits in a PPro socket.
I doubt they're much cheaper than the regular Xeons, but you'd be able save some money on the motherboard.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.