Re: [PLUG] Hardware question

[Kevin Brosius <cobra@compuserve.com>]

> On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 11:02, Beldon Dominello wrote:
>          > > I have a chance to buy a pretty solid dual PII 1GHz workstation that I intend 
>          <snip> 
> 
>          On Sun, 2003-06-08 at 11:49, Kevin Brosius wrote:
>          > That's a good question... Generally, the consensus seems to be that
>          > 1-1, a single CPU box has more overall horsepower. So in your case, a
>          > single 2Ghz box is generally more powerful than a dual 1Ghz box. But
>          > that's a simple generalization. The first question to ask is, do any of
>          > your sound editing tools support multi-threading? If not, then I'd go
>          > for the single cpu box.
> 
>          <snip>
>          > unless you were sure that the apps you want to use support multi-threading. 
>          <snip>
> 
>          Note: Multi-treading and multi-processing are NOT the same thing. To get
>          any use of dual processors, your kernel must be built for it. Out of the
>          box Linux distros are not, so you'll have to compile a kernel.
>          Application support for multi-threading will not make a difference in
>          and of itself.

On Linux, threads are scheduled as processes.  As Mike points out, you
need a SMP capable kernel to use dual cpus.  SuSE supplies SMP kernels
with their distro.  I just assumed other distro's would also.  If yours
does not, you'll need to compile a kernel.

> 
>          In other respects, I'd tend to agree with Kevin: front side bus speed
>          could be more important than number of processors, especially if your
>          apps are i/o bound rather than cpu bound.

-- 
Kevin
_________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group        --       http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug