Performance evaluation of the IBM SP and the Compaq AlphaServer SC

ABSTRACT

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has recently installed both a Compaq AlphaServer SC and an IBM SP, each with 4-way SMP nodes, allowing a direct comparison of the two architectures. In this paper, we describe our initial evaluation. The evaluation looks at both kernel and application performance for a spectral atmospheric general circulation model, an important application for the ORNL systems.

References

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Index Terms

• Computer systems organization

  • Architectures

    • Distributed architectures

      • Client-server architectures

  • Dependable and fault-tolerant systems and networks

• Computing methodologies

  • Parallel computing methodologies

    • Parallel algorithms

• General and reference

  • Cross-computing tools and techniques

    • Evaluation

    • Metrics

    • Performance

• Information systems

  • Data management systems

    • Middleware for databases

      • Application servers

      • Database web servers

• Networks

  • Network performance evaluation

• Theory of computation

  • Design and analysis of algorithms

    • Parallel algorithms