high-end platforms?

[Steve Emsley]

Hi,

I've been developing a model on a P150 Linux box. However, this isn't fast
enough to run the model. From the results of the swarm survey I appear to be
at the bottom end of the swarm community's hardware specification. From
previous postings it appears that DEC alphas are popular and there has been
some mention of SGI machines. My professor seems keen to crank open the wallet
and buy an appropriate box but we would appreciate some advice.

1. We already have an SGI dual processor 512Mbyte RAM 64-byte word box but
previous postings suggest this is a no-go due to a 32-byte memory pointer
constraint in swarm. Is that correct?

2. Despite the reservation above the departments buying strategy has moved
from Sparc to SGI of late. What machines are the SGI community (if any) using?

3. I'm out of my league when it comes to high-spec machines. Where do the
Sparc Ultra and DEC alpha fit into the hierarchy?

To give some indication of my computational overheads my model involves the
following calculations: determine solar irradiance for 70 wavebands at sea
surface every model step, apply primitive-equation turbulence closure model
for top 200 metres of ocean (1 dimensional) in at least 50 boxes every
simulated 15 minutes, apply at least 5 Runge-Kutta integrations for each model
box, track individual agents (phytoplankton) through water column. Model step
presently 1 hour. Model spin-up 10 years (hopefully simulated rather than real
time!). 

Any advice appreciated as long as it's not to change problem domain to
something tractable like orcas & giant squid ;-)

Steve. 
-- 

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Steve Emsley                   Ecosystems Analysis & Management Group
 address@hidden         University of Warwick, England
 http://www.oikos.warwick.ac.uk/~sme/             (+44) (0)1598 753648
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Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.

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