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From: Mark on 23 Nov 2009 10:59

> I really need to get a faster SPARC platform.

Sadly, I think your post title could be used as a classic example of
IT compromise :

"Fast, cheap, and SPARC". Pick any two...

:(

-Mark
From: Richard B. Gilbert on 23 Nov 2009 11:24
Mark wrote:
>> I really need to get a faster SPARC platform.
>
> Sadly, I think your post title could be used as a classic example of
> IT compromise :
>
> "Fast, cheap, and SPARC". Pick any two...
>
> :(
>
> -Mark

ISTR that the original of this was known as the "Truman Triangle"^1 and
read Fast, Cheap, and Good.

1. Truman, Harry S. 1884-1972
From: Paul Floyd on 23 Nov 2009 15:49
On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:35:01 -0700, Canuck57 <Canuck57(a)nospam.com> wrote:
>
> Why not run Solaris on commodity Intel or AMD processor? Maybe even in
> a desktop VM? Say Vista Windblows with VirtualBox set to 2 procs.

Hi

For a project like this, there are likely to be issues with numerical
precision on all platforms. This will be a particular problem if 32bit
x86 is a target, but there will also be inconsistencies between SPARC
and amd64. If identical results are required on all platforms, then all
platforms will need to be used and tested.

Of course, it'd be possible to do the bulk of the development on one
platform (like a fast amd64) and just do builds and tests on the slow
(SPARC).

A bientot
Paul
--
Paul Floyd http://paulf.free.fr
From: David Kirkby on 23 Nov 2009 16:23
On Nov 23, 8:49 pm, Paul Floyd <r...(a)127.0.0.1> wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:35:01 -0700, Canuck57 <Canuc...(a)nospam.com> wrote:
>
> > Why not run Solaris on commodity Intel or AMD processor?  Maybe even in
> > a desktop VM?  Say Vista Windblows with VirtualBox set to 2 procs.
>
> Hi
>
> For a project like this, there are likely to be issues with numerical
> precision on all platforms. This will be a particular problem if 32bit
> x86 is a target, but there will also be inconsistencies between SPARC
> and amd64. If identical results are required on all platforms, then all
> platforms will need to be used and tested.
>
> Of course, it'd be possible to do the bulk of the development on one
> platform (like a fast amd64) and just do builds and tests on the slow
> (SPARC).
>
> A bientot
> Paul
> --
> Paul Floyd                http://paulf.free.fr

I must admit, I'd not really thought about running Solaris 10 on the
x86 hardware. Certainly OpenSolaris on x86 present many issues, that
prevent Sage buiiding at all. For example

http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/7387

shows a linking error which occurs on OpenSolaris (x86) but not on
Solaris 10 (SPARC).. I think this one is due to the fact that Sage
ships a library which gets built on OpenSolaris, and Sun ship the same
(or similar) library, so the linker complains about linking in both of
them. One Solaris 10 (SPARC) Sun do not ship the libraries, so this is
not an issue. I will certainly give Solaris 10 (x86) a try as a
virtual machine on my Sun Ultra 27. Numerical rounding erros just have
to be accepted. If people want higher precision, there are libraries
in Sage which compute things to millions of digits. Of course, such
opperations are a lot slower than using a hardware floating point
processor.

I suspect though, I'll probably just have to use my Blade 2000. It is
at least a usable speed - the T5240 is just too damm slow for what I'm
using it for.

I find testing on multiple platforms uncovers bugs that tend to be
missed on one platform. I even test some of the stuff on HP-UX, though
there are no plans for an officlal port to HP-UX.

Dave
From: Barry OGrady on 24 Nov 2009 00:06
On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 19:35:01 -0700, Canuck57 <Canuck57(a)nospam.com>
wrote:

>Dave wrote:
>> Are there any options for fast single threaded SPARC hardware at a cheap
>> price (say under �500) used?
>>
>> I have a Blade 2000 (2 x 1.2 GHz),
>>
>> http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/sunblade2000/
>>
>> and will no doubt at some point find someone putting a Blade 2500 (2 x
>> 1.6 GHz)
>>
>> http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/sunblade2500/
>>
>> on eBay at a price they might actually get for it, rather than what they
>> might hope to get. But are there SPARC options I'm overlooking?
>>
>> I recently had a Sun Netra T1
>>
>> http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/validateUser.do?target=Systems/Netra_t1_105/Netra_t1_105
>>
>>
>> destroyed by lightning, and my insurers gave me to money to replace it
>> with a SPARC based T1000
>>
>> http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t1000/
>>
>> which I note is just EOL, though it was not a couple of months back.
>>
>> But I know the single threaded performance of a T1000 is going to be
>> worst than the Blade 2000 and in any case, a mate gave me another Netra T1.
>>
>> But the performance of that is pretty poor - *much* worst than the Blade
>> 2000. But at only 60 W of power, I do not mind keeping the T1 on 24/7.
>>
>> I'm just wondering if there are any other models (either server or
>> workstation), I've overlooked. The 2.52-GHz Sun M3000 Casper mentioned
>> would be nice, but that's not cheap.
>>
>> Ideally a server which I could remotely switch on/off would be nice.
>> Then I could stuff it in the garage and not hear it. But I'm not too
>> fussed about that. Just something cheap and with better signle threaded
>> performance than the Blade 2000.
>>
>> I have an Ultra 27, but I spend some of my spare time working on the
>> Sage project
>>
>> http://www.sagemath.org/
>>
>> and want to improve the Solaris SPARC support. (It seems a bit silly, as
>> I will probably never use Sage on SPARC myself much, but I started
>> helping, and do not intend stopping now).
>>
>> I have remote (across the Atlantic) access to a Sun SPARC T5240, but the
>> single threaded performance of that is very poor. My Blade 2000 is much
>> quicker than the T5240, despite being several years older and worth only
>> < 5% the price of a T5240.
>
>Why not run Solaris on commodity Intel or AMD processor? Maybe even in
>a desktop VM? Say Vista Windblows with VirtualBox set to 2 procs.
>
>Any code for SageMath should be portable, and shouldn't be an issue.
>Use the over seas one just for testing.
>
>I have a V100, but haven't given it power in two years.

I have Solaris 10 running on a Sunfire X1100 which has a dual core
2.4Ghz AMD Opteron, with 2G RAM and 2x80G SATA hard drives, and it
didn't cost very much.

=-=-=
Barry
http://members.iinet.net.au/~barry.og
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