Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!emory!mephisto!udel!nigel.ee.udel.edu!mccalpin From: mccalpin@pereland.cms.udel.edu (John D. McCalpin) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: LINPACK 1000x1000 MFLOPS per $$$ Message-ID: Date: 18 Jul 90 21:59:35 GMT Sender: usenet@ee.udel.EDU Organization: College of Marine Studies, U. Del. Lines: 57 Stardent has recently been running an advertisement in Supercomputing Review which uses the measure of LINPACK 1000x1000 MFLOPS per Dollar to evaluate several computers --- specifically the IBM 3090/180VF, the Alliant FX/80, the SGI 4D/240, and the Stardent 3040. Just for the hell of it, I decided to put the IBM Power Station 320 and the Cray Y/MP on the chart, and have reproduced the expanded chart below. Machine MFLOPS Price Ratio -------------------------------------------------------------- **** IBM Power Station 320 13.26 13,000 37.0 **** Stardent 3040 77 162,500 17.0 SGI 4D/240 17 158,000 3.9 Alliant FX/80 69 650,000 3.8 **** Cray Y/MP-8 2144 25,000,000 3.1 **** **** Cray Y/MP 300 4,000,000 2.7 **** IBM 3090/180VF 92 3,300,000 1.0 -------------------------------------------------------------- Those of you who are long-term readers of this group will know that I have never been too supportive of Eugene Brooks "Attack of the Killer Micros" thesis. I am now. For fully vectorizable application codes I can get 1/25 of a Cray Y/MP for under $10,000 (with University discounts). This is equivalent to one Cray Y/MP hour/calendar day, or 30 Cray hours/month, or 360 Cray hours/year. I don't believe that I can get allocations that large at the national supercomputing centers, and if I did, then having the calculations done locally would still be an advantage. Notes: (1) The 13.26 MFLOPS on the IBM 320 was using an 8-column block-mode solver written by Earl Killian at MIPS (earl@mips.com). The standard version of LINPACK with unrolled BLAS runs at 8.4 MFLOPS. (2) The $13,000 configuration includes no monitor or graphics adapter, etc. It is strictly a server, configured with 16 MB RAM and 120 MB disk. NFS is used to store results directly onto my graphics workstation. IBM's prices for memory are a bit steep --- almost $600/MB (list) --- but several 3rd-parties are already at work on cloning the memory boards, which should drop the price to well under $200/MB. The machine can be configured with up to 32 MB using 1 Mbit technology and 128 MB using 4 Mbit technology. (3) The number of 1/25 of a Cray comes from the average of the performance of two fully vectorizable three-dimensional ocean circulation models that I have run on the Cray and the IBM 320. Both models run at speeds in excess of 120 MFLOPS on one cpu of the Cray. One code runs at about 1/30 of the Cray and the other at 1/20. A less vectorizable two-dimensional ocean circulation model runs at 1/3 of the Cray's performance level!!! -- John D. McCalpin mccalpin@perelandra.cms.udel.edu Assistant Professor mccalpin@vax1.udel.edu College of Marine Studies, U. Del. J.MCCALPIN/OMNET