High-performance computing workstation embarrassment

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My original thesis is not progressing. I transferred it to the next lab for the project. I need to use ANSYS for Electromagnetic Field Simulation to analyze the eddy current field of the pipeline. ANSYS has high requirements on computer performance, especially the memory capacity. To do a 0.7 million Degree of Freedom analysis, you need about 6 GB of memory. In order to ensure the smooth development of research work, the boss decided to spend money on a high-performance computing workstation.

I may have used this workstation to participate in the machine-saving program. I am a poor man. after a short period of research and discussion, I have come up with a plan of about eight thousand yuan, it is about athlon 64X2 + Asus a8n5x + drr400 1g x 4 + Hitachi 7k80 80g + 6200 T. It seems like a good solution, and I thought it was a success.

But the partner said that 4G memory could not meet the computing needs. If it had to be more than 6 GB, it could only use the server motherboard. Wow, that would be more than 3 K. Let's just change it. We made a 15 K solution, opteron 248X2 + ddr400 1g X8 + Tyan s2882 + wd160yd X2, and said that s2882 does not support video card upgrade, instead of s2992, I had to use a dual-core CPU, so I switched to opteron 265 (3.1 K) x2. I insisted on using Samsung's memory but couldn't get it. I had to switch back to Kingston. Hard Disk performance does not matter. Raid is not required. I have to cut down the hard disk. The motherboard has a video card and a sapphire x500. In order not to exceed the budget, I plan to cut an opteron 265. As a result, one CPU cannot access all 8 GB memory ......

Finally, we got a 21 K solution: opteron 265x2 + Kingston ddr400 1g x 8 + Tyan s2992g3nr + WD 160yd X 2 + x500. Wow, it's a very strong machine. I naturally stick to it :-)

After the machine was moved back, it was discovered that the system was already better than our capacity. Many people in the lab get used to Windows. Naturally, it is the preferred platform. To use 8 GB memory, you must use a 64-bit system. To use four CPU cores, you must install Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 64-bit. Professional electromagnetic field simulation software ANSYS multiphysics is available in only 32-bit versions and cannot be installed on 64-bit Win 2003. However, the simulation ware ANSYS workbench has a 64-bit version, but it is considered not competent for complicated policy tasks. In this case, the simulation of 0.7 million degrees of freedom on Windows is useless.

Fortunately, there are Linux! Linux supports 4 CPUs and 8 GB of memory, which is just a piece of cake, and ANSYS multiphysics has a dedicated opteron 64 Edition, which takes care of the face and won't end up with this high-performance computing workstation. It took me half a day to install Gentoo Linux on it, so the compilation speed is not very fast. Hoho, it's great. Gnome has been installed in the desktop environment, but several of them are unknown ......

Some people worried that RAID 0 would lose data, so they didn't need it. My efforts eventually failed. RAID 0 will indeed increase the failure rate to about twice the original, but it is not so terrible. If one of the hard disks has a data error and the file data is damaged, raid is similar to the root disk. If the data in the file system is damaged, raid will naturally fail. However, if it is a single hard disk, it will also crash. If you are worried that important data will be lost, it is of little significance to discard raid. Regular backup is the right path, and useful data is actually very small. During simulation computing, the intermediate data and result data are not small, and it is obvious that hard disk performance will become a major bottleneck of the system.

When installing the system, I assigned a task, saying that I would like this machine to be used as a printing service, and a common windows would be useless to everyone. Print Service, an ordinary P-II machine enough to competent, but now let it to serve, really small. It can be predicted that this machine will run in Windows for most of the time, and occasionally conduct large-scale simulation in Linux. At that time, there will be at least 4 GB of cool, And the CPU utilization will be very limited.

Finally, it seems that this 21 k super workstation can play a role, not much different from my original poor solution, but the price is nearly three times! Ah, the money spent on the lab is different, and I am used to it. I only know the thinking of the poor.