How much usage on the processor for this config (S@H)?

[Chintan]

Hi,

I am planning on adding the following computer to my herd, along with an AMD Athlon 800 and another P3 900. The one I have a question about is a Sun machine. I have to convince the person that S@H won't be too intensive on the processor and will not slow down the database the server will be handling. The specs are:

Sun Solaris 2.6
4 400MHz Superscalar SPARC Version 9, UltraSPARC Processors with 8MB Cache each
2GB RAM
2 Fibre Channel RAID0 Drives
blah blah blah

this is the link to the server (the one i will use has 4 processors w/ 8MB Cache each)

http://www.sun.com/servers/midrange/e3500/e3500.spec.html

How long will one WU take and how much of the cpu power will it use if I run S@H as a background process?

Thanks for the help everyone. go team!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Orange Kid]

I dont know what kind of database you are handeling but I would think it should not bother it too badly. Seti will get out of the way of the other processes. It does use about 14meg of memory per client but will use under 1meg cache (somewhere between 512 and 1meg dont know the exact size).A seperate client/folder has to be run for each processer. It will, however, show that the cpu usage is always at 100%. This should be explained to the admin., as they may have a problem with this. If nothing else, I am guessing this machine is on 24/7, a script could be written to start and stop it so as to run Seti only in off peak times. Good luck
Someone will be along to correct me if I'm wrong

 

[networkman]

I can't tell you how long it will take to crunch a work unit, but Orange Kid is correct that SETI will only make use of 1 meg of cache at the most on each processor; in benchmark tests, the SETI client performed no better on 2meg cache Xeon processors than it did on the same speed Xeon processor with only 1meg of cache. The performance hit on a 512k processor by comparison was definitely noticeable, so a 1meg cache is a plus.

Not knowing the kind of database being served, I can't address your question of the load that the SETI client would add, though the estimate of 14 meg of memory per session does sound about right.

 

[Chintan]

thanks for the help guys. i'll let you know if i can convince him

 

[xtreme2k]

honestly S@H WILL Definately put a LOT of load onto the sun machine

regardless of what configuration and running whatever

 

[Ees]

Of course it will increase the "load" on the machine, if you'll take uptime's word for it. The question is: will it interfere? My guess would be: a little, but not that much if you run it on the highest nice-level.

And like Orange Kid says: you could write a script so that seti only runs off-peak. Have a look at what I use on some of my machines:

http://www.casema.net/~ees/realnice

It's a little perl-script that I wrote. It'll stop your seti's whenever the machine is used for other things, and start them up again when the machine is idle. It's a little Linux-centric in its parsing of "uptime" and its switches to "ps", so you'll have to adapt that to match the Solaris versions. Ask me if you need any help.

Martin