Lab JLAB FNAL NERSC DESY BNL CALTECH CERN LAL
Information provider Andy Kowalski <kowalski@jlab.org> Lisa Giacchetti <lisa@fnal.gov> Shane Canon <canon@nersc.gov> Knut Woller <knut.woller@desy.de> Tony W. Chan <tony@bnl.gov> Suresh Singh <suresh@cacr.caltech.edu> Helge Meinhard <Helge.Meinhard@cern.ch> Michel Jouvin <Michel.Jouvin@lal.in2p3.fr>
Last purchase May 2002 September 2002 (434 systems) August 2002 August 2002 (20 systems) September 2002 (160 systems) Near future (20 systems) November 2002 (~ 250 systems) October 2002 (3 systems)
Processor 2 x Intel Xeon 1.4 Ghz 2 x AMD Athlon MP 2000 2 x AMD Athlon MP 2 x Intel Xeon 2 x Intel PIII 1.4 Ghz 2 x Intel Xeon 2.4 Ghz 2 x Intel Xeon >= 2.2 Ghz 2 x Intel Xeon 2.2 Ghz
Mainboard or system SuperMicro P4PDR-iGM Tyan 2466 (Tiger MPX) Tyan 2462 (Thunder K7) i E7500 chipset IBM xSeries 330 SuperMicro P4DPR-I unknown Dell PE2650
Memory 1 GB DDR 200 ECC 1 GB PC2100 DDR reg. ECC DDR (Samsung) DDR 1 GB 1 GB PC2100 DDR ECC 1 GB ECC 1 GB ECC
Chassis 19" 1U (SuperMicro SC812i-400) 19" 2U 19" 1U ATX minitowers 19" 1U 19" 1U unknown (presumably minitowers) 19" 2U
Fully specified Yes (for chassis, only form factor) No (qualified hardware defined,
vendor chooses within these constraints)
No (asked 1U, dual, onboard VGA and Enet) Yes No, some constraints only Yes No (constraints only)  
Future 25 systems next year
same specs with faster processors
Almost continual purchases
will specify more details for power supplies and racks
Next purchase in 1 years' time
no details yet
Purchases almost monthly
Xeon specs not settled yet
Looking at turnkey solutions (eg. SuperMicro Superservers)
Next purchase in 2...4 months
expect specs to evolve until then
  Expect another purchase during 2003
Specs expected to evolve
End winter 2002/03: interested in blade servers
Comments Using Hyperthreading: 4...5 jobs per node (was 3 on dual PIII) Moving to 1U Should have got Tyan Thunder K7X Until recently: 2 x Intel PIII 1.266 Ghz, SuperMicro P3TDLE, ECC SDRAM 133 Athlons better for floating point applications Using dual PIII and dual Athlon systems, too   Expecting blade server prices less than 1U for one drawer
  Comments Vendors provide racks, wiring, installation Original mail Sceptical towards Athlons P4 Xeon performance much application-dependent Original mail (very detailed)   Original mail
  Original mail Original mail   Would favour 19" 1U or 2U Original mail      
    Specification used last time   Original mail (lot more details)