On Saturday 27 April 2002 11:20, you wrote:
> It will be running linux and various microkernels, (no windows). It
> will be on for lots of time and will be used mainly for programming.
In that case an SMP machine would be of benefit, as you can use 'make -j 3'
to compile at double speed, or have compile and links go on in background on
one CPU without interfering with your work. But it'll cost you and is these
days a luxury (unless you can pick up an early dual Athlon motherboard whose
BIOS doesn't check MP chip designation).
> So what would people buy? I've looked at SMP, but most of the
> benchmarks I've seen suggest the gain isn't that great. OTOH, the
> benchmarks have been carried out under windows which I doubt has
> quite the same granularity of SMP support. Dual PIII mobos are
> cheap, but would they really out-perform a uni Athlon?
Not by all that much, but a dual Athlon board might be interesting, if you
really need the power.
> What about a high-end chipset like the Serverworks LE chipset? Both
> Tyan and Supermicro make dual PIII mobos with this chipset. What
> about dual athlon? Could one really get this within the price limit?
> Would using SMP mean that microkernels that don't support SMP would
> not run, or would they only run on one CPU. Could I afford to risk
> this?
They're very expensive, and as they're less common and you're running many
OSes you are likely to have more hardware compatability problems, running
unusual kit.
> I would prefer to use Maxtor Atlas III SCSI hdds (2 of them in
> a software RAID 1) for fault tolerance and because SCSI hdds come
> with 5 years warenty instead of 3:
SCSI only really makes financial sense these days if you are running
multi-user servers with disks in seperate arrays. Yes, there is lots of
pro-SCSI advice on the net, a hang over from days of unreliable IDE chipsets
and drivers, and before strong error detection brought in with UDMA modes.
> I really doubt I'll be able to
> afford upgrades or replacement parts over the next 5 years being a
> student in London. So SCSI on mobo or a seperate card?
If this is the case, I'd do the opposite to what you plan, I'd start with a
cost effective IDE disk, and upgrade later, when I have the money and take
advantage of later better price/performance.
If you are playing around with OSes and programming, with an eye for a
budget, I'd start with building a mid-end cost effective machine, but with a
nice monitor and keyboard. The software you're running isn't going to need
all that much power, and if you are considering programming and OS
development, you'ld probably be better off with 2 networked cheap machines,
one for 'work' and the other for builds and/or tests.
You should also consider backup, RAID 1 really isn't of that much help if
you're living on the bleeding edge of OS development, and switching OSes, and
toying with code. It doesn't protect against software corruption of file
systems, which would be a more common failure.
Rob
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