[Wrf-users] current Xeon processors

[Zulauf, Michael]

Hi all...

We're looking to upgrade our computational cluster, whose primary purpose is to run WRF, and I'm in the process of writing up the specs.  We'll almost definitely stay with our current type of architecture (HP blades, infiniband interconnect, etc).

Our current blades are dual Xeon x5670 (each CPU has 6 cores, 2.93 GHz, 12 MB cache),  and we'll probably go with dual Xeon E5s of some flavor.  Here are a few of the candidates:

Xeon E5-2640v3
8 cores
                2.6GHz
                20 MB cache

Xeon E5-2660v3
10 cores
                2.6GHz
                25 MB cache

Xeon E5-2680v3
12 cores
                2.5GHz
                30 MB cache

Leaving aside cost (for now), anyone have recommendations on these, or other similar processors?  When we went thru this several years ago, there didn't appear to be too much benefit with going with the processors that had the highest number of cores.  I think the additional cores seemed to run significantly less efficiently (at least in the case of WRF).

Has that changed?  The processors with more cores are substantially more expensive (and may be clocked slightly lower), but if WRF runs well on them then it might be worth shelling out the money (not my money) to get more cores.  I probably can't justify buying more blades, even if I go with cheaper CPUs, so if the E5-2680v3 (for example) runs significantly better than the others, I could probably justify them.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Mike

--
Mike Zulauf
Meteorologist, Lead Senior
Operational Meteorology
Iberdrola Renewables


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