Re: kernel config for scientific applications

[Justin Pryzby <justinpryzby@users.sourceforge.net>]

On Tue, Oct 04, 2005 at 01:05:24PM +0200, Maarten Verwijs wrote:
> 
> Hello everyone, 
> 
> I'm having trouble with the following: 
> 
> We're doing a lot of numbercrunching and data-analasys at the site I'm
> working as a systems administrator. I'd like to maximize performance on
> all computers for this goal.
> 
> Is there anyone here with any tips at what to enable/disable in a kernel
> to maximize numbercrunching, even at the expense of
> desktop-responsiveness? 
Probably not.  numbercrunching is a purely userspace thing.  By
design, programs can do all sorts of math without any help from the
kernel; the only thing the kernel is good for is I/O.  If some
particular application is doing lots of IO (use strace, maybe, ltrace
or gdb also; compile with gcc -pg and use gprof), then its possible
you could do something to optimize it .. but generally speaking I/O
should be sparse and efficient, so if its not, its a bug in that
program which should get patched :)

-- 
Clear skies,
Justin