POV-ray is an open source ray tracing package with a long history. It has been a favorite system performance testing package since it’s inception because of the heavy load it places on the CPU. It has had an SMP parallel implementation since the mid 2000’s and is often used as a multi-core CPU parallel performance benchmark on both Linux and Windows.
So lets try it on our Quad socket many-core systems!
As powerful as modern PCs are, sometimes it feels like a waste having just a single person using a PC at a time. By using various server virtualization technologies including virtual machines and PCI passthrough, we created a multi-headed gaming PC that allows up to four users to game on one physical PC at the same time.
Hyper-Threading, hyperthreading, or just HT for short, has been around on Intel processors for over a decade and it still confuses people. I’m not going to do much to help with the confusion. I just want to point out an example from some testing I was doing recently with the ray-tracing application POV-ray that surprised me. Hyper-threading dramatically lowered the performance on a multi-core test system running Windows when running POV-ray in parallel.
I’m going to walk you through a basic install and configuration for a development system to do CUDA and OpenACC GPU programming. This is not a detailed howto but if you have some linux admin skills it will be a reasonable guide to get you started. We’ll do a basic NVIDIA GPU programming setup including CentOS 6.5, CUDA development environment and a PGI compiler setup with OpenACC. The most interesting part may be the OpenACC setup. OpenACC is a relatively new option for GPU programming and allows for a directive (pragma) based coding model.
Does your clock constantly drift to an inaccurate time/date? Our guide will help you hunt down the source of the problem and fix it!
Virtual desktops with NVIDIA GRID offer a great way to provide users with tons of computing performance without the need for each user to have their own individual PC. We took the time to setup and use a virtual desktop for a variety of applications to see if we think virtual desktops will be the future of computing or if they will simply be another niche technology.
With up to 64 cores and 1TB of memory, the new workstations from Puget Systemsoffer not only extreme performance, but also excellent cooling and quiet operation. Puget Systems has been providing quad socket workstations for years now. Today, we refresh that product with a new duo of quad socket workstations that offer even more capacity, better
We take a look at Quad Xeon and Quad Opteron performance and parallel scaling with Zemax OpticStudio including an analysis using Amdahl’s Law. Based on this analysis we then make performance predictions for other processors.
Several times a year my father would score Utah Jazz tickets, and being the oldest son, meant I was the one to accompany him to Salt Lake City to watch the games at the old Salt Palace arena. I sat next to my father for the hour-long drive from our home in northern Utah and knew we were getting close when I could see the arena that looked like a large wedding cake.
For the next two hours I’d cheer on the Jazz against their rivals such as the Portland Trailblazers or the Seattle Sonics. The Jazz were my team and my loyalty knew no bounds. I wore Jazz jerseys, collected player cards, and could tell you how many assists John Stockton needed to overtake Magic Johnson as the all-time assists leader.
When the new Haswell K-series processors were still under NDA, there was a rumor that Intel was going to be moving back to soldering the CPU die to the heat transfer plate instead of using a TIM (thermal interface material). This rumor has been pretty well busted since we now know that these CPUs use what Intel is calling NGPTIM, or Next-Generation Polymer Thermal Interface Material.
Puget Systems builds custom workstations, servers and storage solutions tailored for your work.
We provide:
Extensive performance testing
making you more productive and giving better value for your money
Reliable computers
with fewer crashes means more time working & less time waiting
Support that understands
your complex workflows and can get you back up & running ASAP
A proven track record
as shown by our case studies and customer testimonials
