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Gerbil Elite
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GROMACS Information!

Sat Jun 01, 2002 7:21 pm

Its a MAC, in name only. It's not from Steve Jobs, it's not a slow performer, it doesn't look weird, and it's not overpriced! It's actually the exact opposite!

For those that remember, the Stanford crew are using a new GROMACS core for the new workunits. This new core, as compared to TINKER, will be MUCH faster, as it now has 3DNow! and SSE support.

This doesn't mean that youre going to finish WU's any faster though, as they're going to start sending bigger (and, in many cases, more scientifically significant) proteins to process.

I noticed, on their website, that it also mentions parallelism - maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to run real SMP-supported F@H? Would be neat if we did. It also seems to have a primary focus on linux - that could also mean that the Linux machines gain back the 15-30% lost due to inefficient FORTRAN compilers for linux.

Their website is here:
http://www.gromacs.org/

To see some benchmarks that they did, to see how your current folders will perform (relative to others), check out this link:
http://www.gromacs.org/benchmarks/single.php

They also performed some 'clustering' benchmarks, as shown here:
http://www.gromacs.org/benchmarks/scaling.php

So far, it seems that the Athlon is still King of the Hill. Even comparing a Slot A Athlon to a Coppermine PIII of the same clockspeed results in the Athlon winning. Running Dual Athlons results in a 178% increase in work done... and judging by the comments on the page, they used an original MP board, not an MPX.

It seems to be a very fair benchmark for those Macs too. A PPC G4 at 800MHz is about 95% of a P3 800MHz, and 92% of a Slot A Athlon 800MHz. You guys won't have any problems blowing past those Mac teams. :P Bring on the fanboys!

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IntelMole
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Tue Jun 11, 2002 6:27 pm

hey, why compare it with out of date kit? A socket Athlon 800 is available and has full-speed on-die cache, which brings a few percentage points to the table...

Make that PPC about 90% of a socket Athlon then... (mac bashing) and that's one of their faster chips... Athlons are now three times as fast, nearly... (/mac bashing)

Sorry, had to be done (again!) :-),
IntelMole
Living proof of John Gabriel's theorem
 
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Gerbil Elite
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Tue Jun 11, 2002 8:47 pm

I just read off the comparisons on their website. I don't have the GROMACS core, nor do I have any GROMACS WU's.

Oh well.

It's fun mac bashing, isn't it? Just wait until they have their super leet G5 or whatever tahts running 1.1 GHz and EDO DIMMs. Because hey, EDO is super fast!

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IntelMole
Grand Gerbil Poohbah
Posts: 3506
Joined: Sat Dec 29, 2001 7:00 pm
Location: The nearest pub
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Mac Bashing

Wed Jun 12, 2002 4:30 am

It's like stealing candy off a baby is Mac Bashing, just plain too easy... but the joy it brings is immense...

Not that I steal candy off babies out on the street by the way :lol:,
IntelMole
Living proof of John Gabriel's theorem

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