Links - Hardware
This section provides a selection of the most useful hardware resources for
people working with CFD.
To suggest a link to be included in this section please use
the online
link suggestion form. You are of
course also welcome to contact us directly via email at
webmaster@cfd-online.com.
Contents:
Benchmarks
- SPEC - Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation
![[GOOD]](Icons/smiley.gif)
- The SPECfp benchmarks
are reasonably relevant for CFD applications. You can find recent benchmark
results for a wide range of hardware published on their web-site. Highly
recommended!
- Fluent Benchmarks
- A wide range of typical industrial CFD cases benchmarked on many different
hardware platform with the Fluent solver. This is a very good and current
resource. Highly recommended!
- STAR-CD 3.2 Benchmarks
- Many industrial CFD benchmarks on different hardware running STAR-CD. Nice!
- The Performance Database Server, netlib
- A database with benchmark results. Has been online for a long time but
it is not updated very frequently.
- Linpack Benchmark
- Java Version
- Check your machines Linpack benchmark result with this java applet. Not
that accurate but still cool!
News and Reviews
- the Inquirer
- Daily news from the PC industry. If you want to stay up do date with the
developments in the PC industry this site is very useful - has many inside
sources.
- The Register
- One of the largest news-sites in the PC industry. Updated all the time.
The quality can be a bit varying but they never miss anything.
- ZDNet
- Publisher of leading magazines like PC Magazine, Computer Shopper, ...
Has a very large and nice web site.
- AnandTech
- This amazing site, started 10 years ago by a high-school student, has grown
into one of the leading hardware review sites on the net.
- X-bit Laboratories
- A very good hardware review site originating from Russia.
- Tom's Hardware Guide
- Reviews of PC hardware. For a long time this was the leading independent
hardware test site on the net. In recent years their quality has fallen a
bit though and there are probably better places to look for reviews today.
Hardware Vendors
- Dell Computer Corporation
- The leading vendor for Intel based hardware - very good price, quality
and support. Dell has been gaining market share for a long time.
- HP Compaq
- One of the leading workstation vendors. Sells workstations based on Intel
processors and their own PA-RISC processors running HP-UX. HP has had strong
position in the scientific computing area for a long time and merged with
Compaq recently. Will migrate to IA-64 in the future.
- Silicon Graphics
- One of the leading workstation vendors. Sells workstations based on the
MIPS processor architecture running IRIX Unix or Linux. Will migrate to IA-64
in the future. SGI are well-known for their Origin family of SMP servers
- probably the best SMP architecture today.
- Intel Corporation
- Designs, manufactures and sells processors. PC's based on their IA-32 architecture
and workstations based on their new IA-64 architecture seem to be the main
future computing platforms - all workstation manufacturers are adopting the
IA-64 platform. The only real competitor to Intel in the processor market
is AMD.
Clusters
For information on programming and parallel computing please see the
Links
> Programming and Computing > Parallel Computing section.
- Clusters@TOP500
- Performance ratings and information related to cluster computing.
- Online
Book: Engineering a Beowulf-style Compute Cluster
- A very nice introduction to the art of building compute clusters. Written
by Robert G. Brown.
- Beowulf
Cluster Design and Setup
- Another very nice introduction to the art of building compute clusters.
Written by Amit Jain.
- Windows Clusters Resource Centre
- Lots of information on Windows based clusters. If you for some strange
reason don't want to run Linux then this is a very good resource.
- Parallel
Benchmarking Software
- A simple parallel code which uses LAM/MPI. Suitable for cluster benchmarking.
Free to download and use.
- Parallel
CFD Test Case
- Another simple parallel code which can be used to benchmark clusters. Uses
PVM. Free to download and use.
Cluster Software
- OSCAR - Open Source Cluster Application Resources
- A collection of open-source cluster tools. This is an attempt to standardize
a whole suite of cluster tools. Looks very interesting.
- RedHat, Inc.
- RedHat is the leading Linux distribution and it is the operating system
most frequently used on clusters today.
- SuSE
- SuSE is the second largest Linux distribution. A nice alternative if you
for some reason don't like RedHat.
- Scyld Computing Corporation
- Develops a Linux distribution focused on large cluster applications. Founded
by Donald J. Becker - a very well know pioneer in Beowulf clusters.
- openMOSIX
- An open-source Linux kernel extension for single-image clustering.
Cluster Vendors
A few selected cluster vendors. You might also try the free
Cluster
Quote from
LinuxHPC.org. They say they
will submit your RFQ to 30+ vendors. We haven't tried it. Looks like a nice service
though. Please
email us your feedback
if you do try this service.
- Scali AS
- Sells a wide range of Linux clusters. Working together with industry-leaders
like Dell and Intel. Scali also develops and sells cluster software and optimized
MPI solutions.
- COMPUSYS
- A UK based company that sells linux clusters.
- PSSC Labs
- Sells pre-configures beowulf clusters. Has an online cluster configurator
which you can use to request a quote.
- Atipa Technologies
- Sells linux clusters for high performance computing applications.
- LinuxNetworX
- A new company selling pre-packaged clusters based on Linux. Has sold several
very lage cluster recently - a 1000 CPU cluster for LLNL, a 400 CPU cluster
for GX Tech, a 128 CPU cluster for Lockheed Martin, a 96 CPU cluster for
Boeing, ...
- Penguin Computing
- Has been selling pre-packaged clusters based on Linux for a long time.
Has a good reputation.
Misc
- TOP500 Supercomputer Sites
- Lists the 500 most powerful computers in the world. Systems are ranked
according to their Linpack benchmark results. This site has been online for
a long time. Nice!
- Tsunamic Technologies, Inc. (TTI)
- Provides on-demand remote computing services for computationally intensive
applications like CFD. Works best if you have your own CFD code, not a licensed
commercial code.
