Re: workstation for CUDA
On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 09:51:08PM +0100, Francesco Pietra wrote:
> I am planning to build a work station with FOUR PCI express Fermi GTX
> 470 boards for CUDA, to run on amd64 stable. Four GTX 470 is the only
> fixed hardware (Fermi Tesla has no advantage when single precision
> suffices as in my case for molecular dynamics; this implies that the
> intended software runs on GTX 470, like on Tesla). Thus, the culprit
> is the clock, not the RAM size. However, no overclock, as the
> computations may last weeks.
>
> I am asking advice about the mainboard and CPUs (overwriting
> intended). Also, if equipped with ECC RAM, it could also serve for
> double precision using the CPUs only.
>
> What about:
>
> Supermicro 4021 GA-62R+F (with power supply 1400W)
Max two video cards in that. That's all it has space for. I don't see
anything from supermicro that could run four GTX 470 cards. I think
one system could run three, most only two.
> Two Amd Opteron Six Core 2427
>
> Actually the Supermicro cage+power_source drains a lot of money (at
> least when imported to Europe) and I would prefer separate
> cage+main-board+power-source (provided they fit together; three years
> ago I assembled a Supermicro four-socket board starting from an old
> Chinese cage; it required a full week engineering the cage, which was
> for a smaller board)
Well if you just want it to work and fit well, you probably want to
stick with premade rack mount boxes. I read an article a few days ago by
someone that was very happy with a supermicro box with tesla cards in it.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/21/supermicro_server_render_farm/
One the the main advantages seems to be an excellent power supply.
Given how hard it can be to find quality power supplies, that's a pretty
big deal. Rack mount does always drive up cost quite a bit though.
Now if you are not going rackmount, which given you mention workstation,
then things can be a lot more flexible and cheaper.
Something like an Asus P6T7 WS board should be able to run four GTX470
cards with a xeon 34xx or similar CPU with ECC memory. Since the 470s
are dual slot cars, you need a board with four PCIe x16 slots spaced apart
to do it. You also need a case with at least eight slot openings to fit
four dual slot cards, such as the Silverstone TJ11 for example (it has
ten openings for slots).
It would need something like a Corsair HX1000 or Turbo-Cool 1000 or 1200
to handle four video cards like that along with the system itself.
Certainly has to be a quality large power supply given each 470 takes
200W or so as far as I can tell.
--
Len Sorensen
Reply to: