[KLUG Members] Dual Core systems and Linux

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> > I have been an AMD fan ever since the Athlon line came out.. We recently
> > converted my entire company to AMD 64 machines because we found with our
> > main application when running processes on a high end Intel System took
> > almost 2 hours to run.. on the comparable AMD 64 processor it took 2 minutes
> > to run. 
> Ok, I'm not really on one side or the other so much, but anyone that
> says "This same thing ran 60x faster on CPU X vs CPU Y and I'm going to
> be looking at more differences than just the CPU used. Can I ask for
> more specifics on what exactly ran 60 times faster and what else was
> different in the machines?

I don't even want to get into the AMD-Intel war.  But I agree, *ANY* 60x
performance increase is indicative that something significant other than
the processor changed - or the processors being compared were
generations apart.    Anyway since the same box can't have either a
64-bit AMD or a recent Intel chip (32bit?) you are looking at changes in
the I/O subsystems, the system bus, the network interface, and certainly
the kernel.  Thus all CPU specs other than basic things like SPECint and
SPECfp are to be looked at with suspicion equal to 900 numbers that
claim to be able to read your fortune over the phone.

We not to long ago moved an application from an ancient RS/6000 590 to a
new pSeries 610 and didn't see anything like a 60x performance increase.