SUMMARY : additional CPUs for Ultra

From: Nadya Williams (nadya@bog.ucsd.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 20 1997 - 10:31:29 CST


Thanks to many people who pointed out that Ultra can take only 2 CPU's,
and I would need to get an enterprise server. Special thanks to Daniel Lorenzini
and Alex Finkel.
Nadya.

Original message:
>I have an Ultra 2200. Is this an appropriate machine to install
>more CPUs (let say 4) or is it better to leave it with the existing 2 CPUs,
>and get something else? We are looking into development of a software
>(and using the existing package) that will run on a multi-CPU machine,
>eventually in real time. I have never done any parallel programming, and
>I am not sure what is involved in terms of both hardware and software.
>Any ideas and pointers will be much appreciated.

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bert@virtual.com (Bert N. Shure)
if you want more than two cpu's, you need an E3000.

--bert--
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jeffw@smoe.org (Jeff Wasilko)
The Ultra 2 can only accept 2 CPUs. If you want more, look at the
Enterprise 3000 or 4000. The 3000 can accept up to 6 (depending
on your I/O needs) and the 4000 can accept up to 14 (again,
depending on your I/o needs).

Jeff
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zika@oconto.tamu.edu "Michael R. Zika"
The Ultra-2 box will only take a maximum of 2 CPU's. So, you've already
got the maximum. Sun may be coming out with faster CPU's (rumor of
300MHz on the horizon), but you'll still only be able to stuff two
into the box...

For larger numbers of UltraSparc CPU's, you'll have to look at the
Enterprise 3000, 4000 and above (big bucks!)
--Michael Zika
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Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM
The Ultra-2 only supports 2 processors.

Casper
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Dirk Boenning <boenning@enterprise.capcom.de>
there's no way to install more CPU's ;-)

CU, Dirk.
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Dave.Brillhart@East.Sun.COM
A 2200 can only be configured with 2 CPUs. We don't presently sell an
Ultra-based desktop with more than 2 CPUs. If you need more cycles, look
into the E3000 server, which can take up to 6 250MHz UltraSPARC processors.

-- Dave
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Daniel Lorenzini <lorenzd@gcm.com>
The Ultra 2 box only supports up to 2 CPU's, so if you need more than
that, you will need to go to the 3000 or 4000 class machines.

Generally, multi-cpu machines are more useful for running many jobs in
a shorter amount of time, rather than speeding up a single job.
Programming a single job to use multiple CPU's effectively is a
difficult task. There are standard techniques that work in special
cases where your algorithm can be parallelized. Also, some of the
newer compilers purport to do some amount of parallelization using
threads.

Regards,

Dan Lorenzini
------------
Craig Ledbetter <cledbett@engr.homeaccount.com>
The Ultra 2200 can only take two processors, max. If you want more
processors you'll need to step up to one of the enterprise servers.

Craig
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jasonn@nabaus.com.au (Jason Noorman)
If you RTFM you will see that and Ultra 2200 can only have 2 CPU's.

Silly Question really.

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Alex Finkel <afinkel@pfn.com>
Be careful with terminology. These are Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP)
systems, not parallel. Solaris will schedule processes and threads across
any of the CPU's and will attempt to balance the load across them evenly.
No one processor has priority over another in an SMP system, and the CPU's
share the same memory and disk.

Also, I don't recall the model # 2200, I assume you mean an Ultra 2 with 2
CPU's. The Ultra 2 can't support more than 2 CPU's, so if you need more,
you'll have to move up to an Enterprise 3000 or higher.

Solaris will schedule processes across however many CPU's you have in the
system without any changes to your code. However multi-threaded code will
perform better and scale better with more CPUs.

- Alex

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