4 ms·

I got 24 core machine from Ebay for very reasonable price. I learned a lot and improved my product significantly, money well spend.

by qwerta 12y ago

marktangotango 12y ago
Interesting, would you care to elaborate on the machine and what you learned?
- qwerta 12y ago
  HP Proliant 585 G2 from 2007. It has 4x6 AMD Opterons 8xxx with DDR2 etc. I guess it is no longer cost effective to run those 24/7, but they are still very powerful. Old CPUs without power savings features are great for testing multi-threaded applications. Modern CPU might decide to switch-off some parts during test, rendering result inconclusive. This beasts power requirement looks scary, but with some care it runs in ordinary house. I use separate AC circuit usually used for air-conditioning. It is very loud (like hoover). I usually run it about 30 minutes a day. I work on concurrent Java stuff. Fork-join, CAS, low latency databases etc. I mostly use this machine to verify things I read somewhere. I found that about 60% of things I read about concurrency is wrong. For example messaging (actors) are not really that great compared to well designed threads with locks & CAS. Right now I want to replace memory allocator with global lock (linearly scales up to 6 cores) with CAS version, which should scale up to 16 cores.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    Interesting way of finding something to do with those! I've also been intrigued by the old Proliants on eBay, because the prices seem quite cheap initially: $250-400 for massively multicpu things with tons of RAM. But I've been scared off each time by a mixture of the weight and power usage. One listing even specified that delivery would be made to your loading dock (sadly I do not have a loading dock), although that was for a big Itanium machine.
  - adamnemecek 12y ago
    Do you have a blog about this? You should.

4 ms·

I got 24 core machine from Ebay for very reasonable price. I learned a lot and improved my product significantly, money well spend.

by qwerta 12y ago

I got 24 core machine from Ebay for very reasonable price. I learned a lot and improved my product significantly, money well spend.

marktangotango 12y ago
Interesting, would you care to elaborate on the machine and what you learned?
- qwerta 12y ago
  HP Proliant 585 G2 from 2007. It has 4x6 AMD Opterons 8xxx with DDR2 etc. I guess it is no longer cost effective to run those 24/7, but they are still very powerful. Old CPUs without power savings features are great for testing multi-threaded applications. Modern CPU might decide to switch-off some parts during test, rendering result inconclusive. This beasts power requirement looks scary, but with some care it runs in ordinary house. I use separate AC circuit usually used for air-conditioning. It is very loud (like hoover). I usually run it about 30 minutes a day. I work on concurrent Java stuff. Fork-join, CAS, low latency databases etc. I mostly use this machine to verify things I read somewhere. I found that about 60% of things I read about concurrency is wrong. For example messaging (actors) are not really that great compared to well designed threads with locks & CAS. Right now I want to replace memory allocator with global lock (linearly scales up to 6 cores) with CAS version, which should scale up to 16 cores.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    Interesting way of finding something to do with those! I've also been intrigued by the old Proliants on eBay, because the prices seem quite cheap initially: $250-400 for massively multicpu things with tons of RAM. But I've been scared off each time by a mixture of the weight and power usage. One listing even specified that delivery would be made to your loading dock (sadly I do not have a loading dock), although that was for a big Itanium machine.
  - adamnemecek 12y ago
    Do you have a blog about this? You should.