Dual Processing

D

duck

New member
I read the post Amd versus Intel (intel for me thanks) and comments were made on the dual processers. I knew about needing NT or win2000 but I am under the impression that the specfic software has to be able to take advantage of dual processers. Is this right or can any software work with dual processers.?

Duckhead
 
Well duck as I understand it and will soon find out first hand...It ins't the fact of using two procs but the ability of the hardware & drivers, and software to work with NT and 2000. Supposedly the two are geared more to the professional not the average user thus, I assume, the conflicts between cheap hardware and software and the OS software
 
Greets Steve and Duck

This was something I was deeply curious about. Steve- if you are building a dual processor machine, are you using a I440GX
chipset mobo? if I'm correct, that is the
dual Slot 1. Please keep us posted on your
work... you got my attention.

Thanks maximumly!
Mark a.k.a. das Faithmonsteur
 
An i440BX can also support dual processors.

An i440GX mobo costs about US$75 to US$100 more than a i440BX mobo but only gives you compatibility with 512MB DIMMs. If you have a reason to be using Xeon processors, then you have no choice but to use a GX mobo.

So, for the vast majority of us wanting or using a dual-processor Pentium2 or Pentium iii system, you'll be better off with a BX mobo. With a BX (or GX) mobo, you'll also be stuck with Slot-1 procesors that run with 100 MHz FSB -- which is not really a bad thing at all.

Eventually this year (next year???), you *may* be better off going with an dual-processor i840 mobo for DAW. These mobos will use the new and cheaper "Flip-Chip" (FC-PGA) socketed processors. In the meantime, Intel needs to get the memory support bugs out of the i8x0 chipsets.


AMD ATHLON:
-----------
There are currently NO Athlon mobos that support dual-Athlon processors. Dual Athlon mobos will not be showing up at the earliest until this autumn (...uh, northern hemisphere autumn). By that time we should start seeing the new cheaper socketed Athlon (a.k.a. -- "Thunderbird"), which is like the Intel Flip-Chip in many ways.
 
I read recently that Athlon chipset dual processor support is on hold and is not anticipated any time in the near future. I'll have to recheck that source.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Only the NT 4.0 Os or the new windows 2000 os can take advantage of multiple processors. All programs written for those will make use of the multi processors some what but only those programs that are written as multithreaded programs will take full advantage and there are very few that have been written that way. Vegas Pro is the only audio program that I know of. The most famous is 3D studio an animation package.

Layth
 
I believe that Adobe Photoshop is multithreaded... I run a dual PII system... 2 333mhz processors and 304mb ram. I havn't had any compatability problems with my setup yet. The thing that I've noticed bout NT4 and 2000 is that with a dual processor even if the program is not multithreaded NT will actualy put the program running on one processor and NT will use the other (for the most part). In other words the program get's a dedicated cpu... unless I'm totally wrong bout the way I read my proccess viewer. I still like the CPU power behind a dual system.
 
Just about ALL applications are multi-threaded. Using threads has become the norm. Even developers who don't know they're using threads are using threads. :) Unless of course they're developing for Win3.1 :(

Of course that doesn't mean that having 2 processors is going to help much. Developers do have to optimize applications for multiple processors. But...

Vegas Pro takes advantage of multiple processors...and even n-Track will take advantage of multiple processors quite well with the latest release. I think you'll be suprised if you do some digging.

Note however that you're not going to see better disk performance because you have 4 PIII 1Ghz processors.

Slackmaster 2000
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Slackmaster2K:
I read recently that Athlon chipset dual processor support is on hold and is not anticipated any time in the near future. I'll have to recheck that source.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


A dual-Athlon or symmetrical multi-processing (SMP) chipset is presently being designed by AMD and Alpha Processor Incorporated (API). The new chipset will come along fairly quickly because it will actually be just a subset of an existing Alpha chipset called "Tsunami." Of course, the Athlon is not an Alpha (RISC processor), so they will have to modify the interfaces to some extent, but most of the hard work has already been done. Target date for the Athlon SMP chipset is still "2H 2000" -- which really means sometime after 1/October. :)


<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Note however that you're not going to see better disk performance because you have 4 PIII 1Ghz processors.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>


What with processing power scaling upwards faster than everything else like RAM, I/O busses, storage channels, and mass storage, it seems now that there are all sorts of system bottlenecks.

Case in point:
The once "speedy" PCI bus (33.3MHz x 32bits wide = 133MB/s theoretical bandwidth) has now become THE bottleneck on higher-end systems. So how do you fix this problem? The first "fix" was to go to 2 (or more) PCI busses and segregate expansion cards in a way to reduce PCI bus saturation. There are only a few PC mobos available that have at least 2 PCI busses.

Here's one here: http://www.supermicro.com/images/Imag_Prod/p6dgh.jpg


Chipsets that support multiple PCI busses are rather expensive. So, the simplest solution to increase PCI throughput has been to increase the PCI bus clockspeed to 66MHz and the PCI bus width to 64-bits (66.6MHz x 64bits wide = 533MB/s theoretical bandwidth).

There are now finally a few PC mobos coming to market with these new 4x PCI busses. But, even this 4x speed-up of the PCI bus has proven not to be enough with everybody. There are some Compaq Alpha systems soon coming to market that can support up to 256 separate 66MHz/64-bit PCI busses!

There is another speed bump for PCI coming next year and there is an all-new expansion bus coming along as well. The next PCI will be called PCI-X and will be clocked at 133MHz (133MHz x 64bits wide = 1064MB/s theoretical bandwidth).

In 2002, InfiniBand will show up. Even though there will indeed be X86 systems using InfiniBand, just don't expect to see this bus in a typical PC any time soon, though. InfiniBand will have bandwidth starting off at just over a GB/s and can be scaled by adding "wires" to the bus for parallel operation. In fact, InfiniBand can replace PCI, SCSI, and Ethernet all at once! With InfiniBand, you can also design and build a "switched fabric" between devices so that you don't have bottlenecks anywhere, even with all of your devices going full bore.

In any case, PCI will still be around a long long time. Hopefully it will at least be able to keep up with ever-faster mass storage.
 
Faith I will, I'll have to look up the details of the mobo (I'm green at this).

Slackmaster I have noticed through reading that vegas pro takes advantage of dual procs.
I haven't decided on the recording software yet and should decide soon. I did go with a Teac cd-r scsi like you suggested waaay back.
 
this was a redundant comment, so I deleted it

[This message has been edited by ruebarb (edited 03-15-2000).]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top