Who needs dual cpu's ?

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/16/orion_96/

Engineers welcome era of 96-chip PCs... The company which garnered much attention last year for shipping a 12-processor "desktop" cluster will deliver a 96-processor version of this system in the next couple of weeks.

Merrion

Engineers, mathmeticians, gamers, databases, programmers, "adaptive software" ,...subject to OS support obviously.

leeroybrown

Assuming that it performs well it sounds like a very good idea. Loads of companies need that kind of processing power without the hassle of building a cluster.

Nukem

For some applications its real handy having two processors. Ran an awful lot of 3D Cad and solid modelling and it grinds at the computer so i guess for analysis and tests and Modelling it would be benificial. Love to try it though.

leeroybrown

Obviously, this will only be beneficial if you have a proper parallel computing application that uses MPI (or a similar libraries). For the kind of work/processing I (and most others) do a dual CPU machine (SMP as opposed to clustering) would be faster as I wouldn't be taking advantage of parallelism.

rsynnott

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/16/orion_96/

Well, they're of no real use to gamers currently. Very useful for people doing heavy 3d rendering, somewhat useful for programmers, and of course, very, very useful for people who want small fast servers. And any Real Operating System will support it quite nicely.

galwaydude18

I want one now! Cant wait till they come out! I hope to get rid of my current rig next christmas and build a dule core rig then! hopefully the prices wont be as bad then!

rsynnott

galwaydude18 wrote:

I want one now! Cant wait till they come out! I hope to get rid of my current rig next christmas and build a dule core rig then! hopefully the prices wont be as bad then!

What do you want it FOR tho? It's only really suitable for somewhat specialised tasks right now...

galwaydude18

So that I can have the latest and badest technology out there! Dubdvd will back me up on this! Im damn sure that he will be queing up for one the minute they come out for sale over here!

atheist

I have the oppertunity to work with machines with 2 or 4 procs and find thasks more responsive. One proc can look after kernel processes while your apps run on the others. I multitask a lot with dozens of windows open. Ideal app is virtual machines.
Hyperthreading is useful, but gives even better performance when there are two physical cpus. With Intel going multicore I am looking forward to a dual processor laptop

BloodBath

So that I can have the latest and badest technology out there! Dubdvd will back me up on this! Im damn sure that he will be queing up for one the minute they come out for sale over here!

I don't think he will be.


BloodBath

galwaydude18

BloodBath wrote:

I don't think he will be.


BloodBath

How do you make that out? Dubdvd always keeps up with the latest technology out there in the market!

BloodBath

I'm sure he will tell you himself why soon enough. He won't need it.


BloodBath

uberpixie

atheist wrote:

I have the oppertunity to work with machines with 2 or 4 procs and find thasks more responsive. One proc can look after kernel processes while your apps run on the others. I multitask a lot with dozens of windows open. Ideal app is virtual machines.
Hyperthreading is useful, but gives even better performance when there are two physical cpus. With Intel going multicore I am looking forward to a dual processor laptop

So you can burn the willy off yourself?

rsynnott

galwaydude18 wrote:

So that I can have the latest and badest technology out there! Dubdvd will back me up on this! Im damn sure that he will be queing up for one the minute they come out for sale over here!

Ah, okay, had been assuming you had a rational reason...

Ponster

I think his point was

"Who needs dual CPU's......when you can get 96 processors in the same box" !

A statement as opposed to a question.

Capt'n Midnight

Microsoft have been promising us multithreadded apps since Office 95 so it's not like they shouldn't make use of them, though thier licensing model where you have to pay more to get Pro/server/enterprise in order to use more processors ain't exactly helping.

there would be a lot of penguins on the start up screen

Nukem

BloodBath wrote:

I'm sure he will tell you himself why soon enough. He won't need it.

ya he's been quiet alright.Wonder what he's concockting?
Twin CPU and SLi would sound right for him?
Is that even possible.

AmenToThat

Musicians using pc's is one answer to who needs dual cpu's!

Tools like software reverbs or software synthesizers use massive amounts of cpu.
A tune can have several instances of reverb going at the same time as well as a host of other effects and software synths ontop of your sequencer for running the song (large amounts of ram are also needed).
So personally I dont know if Ill ever have enough cpu as as soon as the cpu catches with your needs up the music manufacterers are making bigger and better effects and synths that require more and more cpu.

rsynnott

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Microsoft have been promising us multithreadded apps since Office 95 so it's not like they shouldn't make use of them, though thier licensing model where you have to pay more to get Pro/server/enterprise in order to use more processors ain't exactly helping.

there would be a lot of penguins on the start up screen

Microsoft, dreadful appalling company tho they are, are in fact being quite reasonable about this whole thing; they are for licensing purposes treating dual-core processors as one processor! (Except in the case of XP Home, which will continue to be single-processor bound). In this, they're being far more generous than most of their rivals, presumably hoping to gain a share of the high-end database market. Of course, to do this, they'll have to get a decent 64bit OS and apps out the door, which seems to be an issue.

Yep, most conventional apps are marginally multi-threaded, not that it makes much difference, because modern processors are so fast that no-one is concerned with the performance of office apps, and even if there is a bottleneck it'll be IO-based.

Games, which drive most of the PC early-adopter lunatic-fringe, haven't even managed the jump to 64bit yet (except for Unreal Tournament on Linux, apparently) tho this is largely Microsoft's fault. Redesigning your average game engine to take advantage of two processors will be no small task. And of course, for most games the bottleneck is the graphics card. Don't expect to see games taking advantage of this any time soon.

Servers will use them, especially as they fall in price.

They'll be of use to 3d graphics artists, musicians, people who do stuff with graphics in general, and some programmers.

rsynnott

Nukem wrote:

ya he's been quiet alright.Wonder what he's concockting?
Twin CPU and SLi would sound right for him?
Is that even possible.

It would be very, very silly, and a hideous waste of vast dollops of cash. I can't imagine that anyone has gone to the trouble of creating such a motherboard.

Ciaran500

rsynnott wrote:

It would be very, very silly, and a hideous waste of vast dollops of cash.

Sounds like its right up dubs alley.

Capt'n Midnight

rsynnott wrote:

Microsoft, dreadful appalling company tho they are, are in fact being quite reasonable about this whole thing; they are for licensing purposes treating dual-core processors as one processor! (Except in the case of XP Home, which will continue to be single-processor bound). In this, they're being far more generous than most of their rivals, presumably hoping to gain a share of the high-end database market. Of course, to do this, they'll have to get a decent 64bit OS and apps out the door, which seems to be an issue.

Actually IMHO they are stifiling multi processor with thier licences, Linux as per penguin reference doesn't charge extra. Who are the other competitors who are charging extra for processors, and more importantly how much do their processors cost each ?
As for the dB market - microsoft either charge per client/device (eg: pda) or per processor used (cheaper if more than 30 devices will ever use the dB - note I do not mean 30 concurrent users). There have been dual processor boards for a long time and because microsoft have 90% of the market (and apple who have most of the other 10% haven't done dual CPU until recently) there has been no incentive for an entry level dual cpu.

Try explaining to a home use that the microsoft license doesn't allow them to use all of their single processor !

Unless you are limited by a von-neuman bottleneck multiple CPU's are a good thing. Event then with branch prediction you can guess the most likley outcome and have the next calculations done before you hit the bottleneck.

rsynnott

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/19/microsoft_dualcore_love/

Read please. For licensing purposes, Microsoft are treating dualcore processors as single-core. XP Home, however, will not support them (it doesn't support multiprocessor systems in any shape or form. Since dualcore chips will be of no use to most home users for the next year or so, this is a non-issue.

Of course, until Microsoft manages a decent 64bit OS, running Windows on a dualcore system (all of which will be 64bit) is a little wasteful.

po0k

Nukem wrote:

ya he's been quiet alright.Wonder what he's concockting?
Twin CPU and SLi would sound right for him?
Is that even possible.

Dual Xeon, an 8x and a 16x lane. Been out for ages.

And on topic: the attraction of this system is that it's highly compact, and relatively affordable. You have an off-the-shelf cluster under your desk for $12,000. Spankin' if you're an engineer or developer.

po0k

rsynnott wrote:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/19/microsoft_dualcore_love/

Read please. For licensing purposes, Microsoft are treating dualcore processors as single-core. XP Home, however, will not support them (it doesn't support multiprocessor systems in any shape or form. Since dualcore chips will be of no use to most home users for the next year or so, this is a non-issue.

Any user who understands the significance of SMP isn't running XP Home.
Only Dell users run XP Home, and aslong as they hear the Chime of the Damned in the ads, they're happy enough to buy whatever is proffered to them, whether it's actually being used to the fullest or not.

Capt'n Midnight

rsynnott wrote:

Since dualcore chips will be of no use to most home users for the next year or so, this is a non-issue.

Shame really, since they have been marketing multi threading to desktop users for a decade now.

rsynnott

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Shame really, since they have been marketing multi threading to desktop users for a decade now.

Yes, they have, and Windows multithreads. Multithreading by no means requires multiple processors. Multithreading is very nice for GUI desktop applications, and is used in most such applications. However, there are very few situations where a normal user needs even the power of a single core modern chip. Most of those situations involve games. Games are not multithreaded to an interesting degree, and will not be easy to make so.
Rob.

FX Meister

I have dual cpu's in my machine. Two 3.06 GHZ processors. I do a lot of video editing with Avid and I need a fast machine. I've got a Mojo digital non linear accelerator as well which makes it faster also.

rsynnott

Very nice; you're not a typical home user tho, then

FX Meister

Ahh I am, just an enthusiastic home user

rsynnott

FX Meister wrote:

Ahh I am, just an enthusiastic home user

The average home user does NOT have an offboard video manipulation co-processor. I'm definite on this Didn't even know they made consumerish ones like that... Or is this just the latest craze I haven't noticed?

Nukem

SyxPak wrote:

Dual Xeon, an 8x and a 16x lane. Been out for ages.

Dual Xeon + 2 gfx in Sli on one mobo (not Dual core) ?
Link please, never seen it,interested in the read!

po0k

It's an Intel workstation/server board, was out before the NF4.
Can't remember where I saw it. Search through the older Anandtech articles.
Before the NF4 it was the only SLI board available afair.