[Wrf-users] WRF on AMD Opteron vs. Intel XEON

["Klaus Görgen"]

Hi all!

we are planning a small in-house Linux cluster with 8 dual-CPU nodes (Infiniband interconnects from Mellanox). WRF-ARW v2.2 is supposed to be one of the first and major applications (however the machine will be used for a variety of very diverse computing needs).

I am not sure as to whether we should -- at the moment -- either get 2 of the latest Intel Xeon quad-core E5345 CPUs with 2.33 GHz per node or e.g. the AMD Opteron dual-core 2216 HE with 2.4 GHz. Using either Intel or PGI (we'll have both compilers anyway) WRF will run; what I am worried about is that the Xeons might not scale as well as the AMD Opterons and that we cannot make full use of the quad core architecture, after all it is "just" two dual cores combined and the Opterons have one memory controller per CPU core inside the CPU, etc. So even with just half the number of CPU cores we might be better off in the end.

Does anybody have any experience with this issue, perfoemance Opteron vs. Xeon? Thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Klaus

--
Klaus Görgen
Département Environnement et Agro-Biotechnologies
Centre de Recherche Public - Gabriel Lippmann
41, rue du Bril, L-4422 Belvaux, Luxembourg
e-mail: goergen at lippmann.lu
phone: ++352.470261-461, fax: ++352.470264
http://www.crpgl.lu
Ask me to add you to my Skype.