Step into 64-bit system

By ADAM GIFFORD

Canterbury University's electrical engineering department has taken a step into 64-bit computing with the purchase of eight dual AMD Opteron processor servers put together by Christchurch-based assembler Insite Technology.

Department analyst Mike Shurety said the servers would supplement the department's existing cluster, which ties together 25 dual-processor servers which used 32-bit Intel chips.

The cluster is used for simulating communications systems, an application which requires extensive number crunching, and for image processing.

"The 64-bit processors give us more power but there is not a lot of software for them, so part of the research is looking at what 64-bit operating system we will use."

Suse, Red Hat and Mandrake all have 64-bit Linux operating systems but there are significant differences in price and support.

Shurety said the new servers cost about $6000 each.

"They are really stripped down - just the processors, 4 gigabytes of memory per processor and a little bit of disc space to boot them. The rest is done over the network," he said.

"All the machines have an automatic load balancing system, so when you submit a job, the master node sees which processors have spare capacity and allocates the task."

He said some of the jobs took weeks to run, so having a reliable system was critical.

The cluster is used by about 100 postgraduate students and 22 academic staff involved in research. Undergraduates will also be given some limited use of the system.

Insite server business development manager Oliver Mould said the Canterbury cluster was the first confirmed dual Opteron server order in New Zealand.

In August, Insite, a subsidiary of listed company Renaissance, assembled its first four-way Opteron server for an as yet undisclosed New Zealand company.

Unlike Intel's 64-bit Itanium chip, the AMD Opteron runs native 64-bit and 32-bit code.

Itanium runs 32-bit code in emulation mode, resulting in slower performance for such applications.

"Opteron means you can invest in hardware now and run your existing applications natively, and have the advantages of 64-bit when the new applications come along," Mould said.