Hello,

I have an old 7044 -170 (44p) which is running AIX 5.1 currently. However
I'm not too fond of it because it's slow and compilations take up to an hour
of time.
It has like 1 gb of ram which is all fine.

I am looking for faster equiptment though to run AIX 5.3 and get faster
compiles.
In this relation I was offered a F50 with two cpu's or perhaps a H50.

Would this be a good upgrade speed wise or is there anything I should be
aware of?

Thanks.

-- Henrik

On Oct 12, 9:57 am, "Henrik Goldman" <henrik_gold...@mail.tele.dk>
wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have an old 7044 -170 (44p) which is running AIX 5.1 currently. However
> I'm not too fond of it because it's slow and compilations take up to an hour
> of time.
> It has like 1 gb of ram which is all fine.

What do mean which slow ? Slow desktop, slow application ?
What kind of compiler are you using and how may lines are you going to
compile ?
Before thinking of new hardware i would try to figure out what the
current problem is. But in case you have much money new hardware would
not hurt ;-)

cheers
Hajo

> What do mean which slow ? Slow desktop, slow application ?
> What kind of compiler are you using and how may lines are you going to
> compile ?

No I don't care about desktop and similar. All I use is remote console and
automated processes.
The primary usage is g++ compiler with C++ code. The software we have takes
up to an hour to compile and consist of many different modules that needs to
be processed.
I don't know how many lines there are but a safe bet is above 50000 lines or
likely much more.

> Before thinking of new hardware i would try to figure out what the
> current problem is. But in case you have much money new hardware would
> not hurt ;-)

Well it's not just about money. It's about delivering faster results to
customers.
One current problem is that we cannot automate testing since AIX 5.1 doesn't
support Java 1.5
The automation tools require at least 1.5 so going to AIX 5.3 would do a lot
of good stuff for us.

Thanks.

-- Henrik

On Oct 12, 3:57 am, "Henrik Goldman" <henrik_gold...@mail.tele.dk>
wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have an old 7044 -170 (44p) which is running AIX 5.1 currently. However
> I'm not too fond of it because it's slow and compilations take up to an hour
> of time.
> It has like 1 gb of ram which is all fine.
>
> I am looking for faster equiptment though to run AIX 5.3 and get faster
> compiles.
> In this relation I was offered a F50 with two cpu's or perhaps a H50.
>
> Would this be a good upgrade speed wise or is there anything I should be
> aware of?
>
> Thanks.
>
> -- Henrik

Henrik: I would suggest firstly that you have a look at IBM's
performance report
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ss...O03002USEN.PDF
which compares the relative capacity of all pSeries and RS/6000
models. It will give
you a fairly good if rough idea of what to expect.
How much RAM do the F50 and H50 have. More RAM might help your
compiles
as well.

HTH

Jim Lane

In article <470f3376$0$53247$edfadb0f@dread15.news.tele.dk> , "Henrik Goldman"
<henrik_goldman@mail.tele.dk> writes:
> The primary usage is g++ compiler with C++ code. The software we have takes
> up to an hour to compile and consist of many different modules that needs to
> be processed.
> I don't know how many lines there are but a safe bet is above 50000 lines or
> likely much more.
>

One hour for some 50000 lines of code seems exceptionally slow.
Did you look at other bottlenecks i.e. network etc (if the
filesystem is remotely mounted) ?

> I am looking for faster equiptment though to run AIX 5.3 and get faster
> compiles.
> In this relation I was offered a F50 with two cpu's or perhaps a H50.

I believe the F50 isn't supported under 5.3.
Moreover, though being a good and stable box, its technology
is older than a decade now (PPC604e @ 333MHz). A 44P is more recent
(Power3), so swapping it for an F50 would rather be a downgrade.
Whether you can benefit from the multiple CPUs
of a F50 depends on if you can find your other bottlenecks.

In article <1192188462.488768.190390@t8g2000prg.googlegroups. com>,
Jim.Lane@cibc.com writes:
> How much RAM do the F50 and H50 have. More RAM might help your
> compiles
> as well.

1GB in a 44P-170 is a good start, it maxes out at 4x512MB, IIRC.
The F50, being an older machine, can hold only 512MB out-of-the-box.
For more you need extra memory boards, occasionally seen on eBay.

In article <1192196993.165730.53550@i13g2000prf.googlegroups. com>, LarryBoy
<larry.taylor@co.travis.tx.us> writes:
> An F50 is a move up from an 44p.

In which way ?
The 44P's are one generation younger
and are - in my experience - at least a factor 1.5 faster
in both number crunching as well as compilation.
Leaving aside show-stoppers like slow network
and not enough memory, of course.

> If the current firmware is installed
> on the F50 then it CAN run AIX 5.3

That's new to me. I thought that the F50 barely
escaped the drop of 5.2 support for 'beige' systems.
And that the 43P-150 was the last of the PPC systems
to run 5.3.

> If you business has F50 in house then I'd jump at the chance.
> If you have to purchase then I would look at a power5 system. The new
> power6 is almost goingto be announced

There's a Power6 entry level system ?

> and the price on the power5
> should drop. The power5 will run AIX 5.3
>

Hardly, if there's no replacement for entry level machines.

> One hour for some 50000 lines of code seems exceptionally slow.
> Did you look at other bottlenecks i.e. network etc (if the
> filesystem is remotely mounted) ?

It's purely the cpu speed which is the limiting factor here.
Not disk, not memory or anything else.
We know this because have another linux machine (inside vmware) with only
128 mb ram and it compiles the same code in like 10 minutes.

The compilation is slow because the code is shared between many applications
using it. There is very little further optimization that can be done
unfortunatly.


> I believe the F50 isn't supported under 5.3.
> Moreover, though being a good and stable box, its technology
> is older than a decade now (PPC604e @ 333MHz). A 44P is more recent
> (Power3), so swapping it for an F50 would rather be a downgrade.
> Whether you can benefit from the multiple CPUs
> of a F50 depends on if you can find your other bottlenecks.

Thank you for your input. This is certainly a valid reason for not going
down this road.
A stable machine for 5.3 is the minimum requirements to be able to get
anywhere. Otherwise it's no better then what we have today.

-- Henrik

> Henrik: I would suggest firstly that you have a look at IBM's
> performance report
> ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/common/ss...O03002USEN.PDF
> which compares the relative capacity of all pSeries and RS/6000
> models. It will give
> you a fairly good if rough idea of what to expect.

Thanks! Thats a good link.

> How much RAM do the F50 and H50 have. More RAM might help your
> compiles
> as well.
>

I was offered a machine with 1 gb ram. I really doubt it's the ram which is
the problem though.
Our current build machine also has 1 gb and doesn't even use half the memory
as far as I can see.

The g++ processes are not taking a whole lot and their execution time is
only a few seconds.
I think I've seen usage up to about 250 mb within one process.
Only if AIX doesn't clear the memory very fast obviously it would be a
concern. However I'm sure that AIX is fairly up to speed with memory
management techniques.

-- Henrik

> 1GB in a 44P-170 is a good start, it maxes out at 4x512MB, IIRC.
> The F50, being an older machine, can hold only 512MB out-of-the-box.
> For more you need extra memory boards, occasionally seen on eBay.

Thats very good to know!

Obviously the big question would be what I should look after (e.g. on Ebay)
if I would be looking for something better than this 44P.

Btw... did I mention that AIX does a very good job replacing an office
heater? :-)
You just need some sun and a beach and then you can feel you're already in
the tropical parts of the world.
Anyway we try to have the machine turned off as much as possible to not
cause our building to consume too much electricity.
With the slow build times it's even just more encouraging :-)

-- Henrik