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Home > Archive > Linux/Unix > August 2002 > Multiple Processors
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Multiple Processors
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| Anyone here have much experience running Linux with multiple processors? I am trying it out on a server with several to see what kind of performance I can get. | |
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| Nope, but that's on my long list of toys to get. I'm thinking of getting an older dual SPARC system once my router collection's built up. Depending on what runs on the server, it may be as slow as a uniprocessor system, or nearly reach its theoretical performance limit (ie depends on whether or not apps are multiprocessor capable and how many different processes are running at once). One of the biggest advantages of a multiprocessor system is that if you have a renegade process it will probably only affect one processor.
The only dual processor system that I've ever gotten to play much with was one that was in my electronics class last year. The speed was amazing, but I think that had more to do with the RAID 5 array then anything else. It was running NT too, so I can only imagine how FreeBSD would perform on it.
What are the specs on that server? | |
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| Well, this is an old beat up thing that didn't work and I kind of fixed it and it's running . . . not bad, but not like a new system would. I was just thinking of doing some experiments with it before it dies for good. So am not sure the performance will be spectacular under any circumstances, but am curious to see how it will do compared the single-processor setup. BTW, the second processor I have here is an old 80486 . . . it works but just wanted to see if anyone else thought that it made much of a difference in their setups. I am guessing that unless a heavy strain was put on it, I wouldn't see much in the way of a difference, since I have Red Hat on it and it runs pretty good, I think the older hardware would be the only thing I have to worry about. | |
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| You're right, the performance will depend a lot on what you throw at it. It'll also depend a lot on how the rest of the hardware, especially memory and harddrive speed stack up since most applications depend more on these then the processor. The various 486 models vary a lot on speed. If these are DX4 processors, then you'll actually have a decent amount of processing power. | |
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| Yes, the extra processor is a DX4 but my hard drive is a bit unreliable now, am seeing what I can do to get eveything fixed up so that I'll be able to do some stress testing without having other factors take away from the test value. I'll let you know how this turns out . . . | |
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| Hi Randy,
I have had a little experience with a dual proc Linux system, however, I haven't had much time to test it yet. I have an Abit-BP6 with Dual Celeron 366s, I have toyed with overclocking them and they run fairly stable at 506, but I get the occasional lockup so I had backed down to 413. This was my primary computer for awhile, I ran Windows 2000 on in for awhile, but most games don't take advantage of both processors so it didn't help that much. I had installed Linux on it at one point, but I have gone through several rebuilds and I hadn't put it back on. I recently upgraded to an Athlon 1GHz and I decided to turn my Celeron system into a Linux box. I haven't had much time to play with it yet, I'm thinking that programs that are multithreaded should see some improvement, I would think that any time of compiling would also gain some speed. It has been awhile since I read it, but I recall see a review of the BP6 with Linux and I think it did show a good size improvement in the speed of a kernel recompile. I'd be interested to hear your results and if I find anything interesting I'll let you all know. | |
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| OK, I am still messing around with it and trying to see wghat I come up with. So far, for an old "piece of junk" it is doing remarkably well. I have been working on some programs which have some processor intensive computing routines, and am seeing if I notice a difference on the speed there and on my regular machine. Will let you know what I come up with. | |
| fnordhor 2002-08-25, 12:51 pm |
| I know you ask about Linux and dual processors.
Right now I am running a Quad pentium 166 system
with 6ea 36.5 Gb Hard Drives (raid 5 with Hotswap)
and 768mb memory. With NT 4.0 Enterprise Server
and ISS 4.0. It a HP Netserver LS 166. I picked it
up off of eBay for $65.00 + shipping (ship $50)
Someone spelled netserver wrong nteserver.
Runs great and faster that a 500mhz in server
mode. Made some changer to system.
New Video Card (4mb) HP built in 512k video/
385 mb to 768 mb memory.
Different nic 3C509 (ISA) to 3C597 (EISA)
ZIP 250 (SCSI) Added |
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