Subject: RE: Alpha cluster?
From: Jeff Sturm (jsturm1@home.com)
Date: Tue Nov 02 1999 - 21:08:24 PST
On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Greg Lindahl wrote:
> > If a web resource is compute-intensive, you might benefit from the Alpha
> > to shorten response times.
>
> Not really, because Alphas are not that much faster than x86 chips on
> integer operations. The expanded address space and (sometimes) the higher
> memory bandwidth can be nice, but unless you NEED the big address space,
> x86-based boxes are likely to be more cost effective on integer-intensive
> tasks.
Maybe you're right, Greg... but from what I've seen (and I'm not testing
state-of-the-art hardware here) the Alphas are very cost-effective.
It's true that just about any modern hardware is overkill for a plain
static site. But I've been disappointed with the performance of our Intel
machines for database-driven sites. SPECmarks aren't everything ya
know... (and I did say _might benefit_, after all).
I'm talking about a $2500 164LX to, say, a 400MHz PII. I don't have hard
figures but let me just say the LX holds its own very well. At the very
least it's a very tight race. (Which is to say I don't understand why so
many folks insist on SPARC boxen for web serving... they seem to lose on
price and performance.)
SMP is another story... 2 or 4-CPU Alphas are very expensive. (But my
4-way Intel machines are somewhat underwhelming in performance... they
seem to bottleneck easily on bus traffic.)
> That's why Compaq's marketing push for the Alpha for web farms is a bit
> weird...
It's just industry competition I'd suspect... aren't HP, IBM and Sun doing
about the same?
Jeff
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