Time to upgrade the microfarm.

[GameALot]

I have been running Mages' Fold Server since before the infamous 1.0 release, and it's time to upgrade some hardware!

The plan is to buy a C2D for the server to start and end up with 3 clients later. My only real question is how well the kernel supports the C2D and 965 chipset. Has anyone tried this combo yet?

Here's the plan so far:

Either E6300 or E6400 processors. Overclocked of course.
1GB RAM per machine, just in case.
MB's with one PCI-Express slot. SLI is for my gaming machine.

I read that the memory on these gets hot, so I thought about adding a fan here and there.

The possible release of a SMP client for Linux has me intrigued. It will be interesting to see which nets more PPD, SMP or separate clients.

Thoughts, ideas? Discuss!



I miss black text.

 

[unhappy_mage]

I haven't tried it. The primary concern is the LAN chipset - the clients only need to know how to get to the network, and how to use memory The server has to recognize whatever you want to use as storage - ICH ide should work - and network. I have a Core Duo (not 2) machine that I can try in a bit.

Note that the SMP client only works for 64-bit linux as yet. They're working on 32-bit. I haven't heard any other reports as to PPD, but my guess would be higher than 2 seperate clients - they can run longer WUs in the same time, so they'll probably have a "big WU" bonus associated with them for a while yet.

Also, the SMP code only works with Mac and Linux as yet. I think the fold-server may be a little popular in the coming days

 

[GameALot]

Would it be possible / easy to modify a 64bit version of Linux to run as the server? The C2D are 64bit, right?

 

[unhappy_mage]

It would indeed be possible. I'll definitely be looking into 64-bit-izing fold-server. The difficulty would be making it 32-bit compatible as well as able to run SMP-64 clients. But I'll work on it

 

[Oldbenwa]

It would indeed be possible. I'll definitely be looking into 64-bit-izing fold-server. The difficulty would be making it 32-bit compatible as well as able to run SMP-64 clients. But I'll work on it

You do know that this SMP client is a closed beta, right?

By the time it is available for everyone, Stanford will most likely have a 32bit Linux client as well. At least that's what I have gathered....

 

[GameALot]

Is there a performance increase in running 64 over 32 bit in folding? I don't remember seeing that discussion before.

 

[unhappy_mage]

Yeah, I know. But the infrastructure changes can be done ahead of time - you keep track of who's SMP and who's uniprocessor, and give them different clients. Or let the scripts determine it, client-side. Probably makes more sense that way.

In any case, I haven't started on that change yet. But it's coming. Bug me about it.

 

[marty9876]

You do know that this SMP client is a closed beta, right?

By the time it is available for everyone, Stanford will most likely have a 32bit Linux client as well. At least that's what I have gathered....

Kinda a good point. Redoing a ton while in closed beta under 64 bit might be a lot of time wasted.

 

[zim01]

Kinda a good point. Redoing a ton while in closed beta under 64 bit might be a lot of time wasted.

But there's got to be a big decrease in performance 64 versus 32 bit.