Which is faster, distributed or shared data?

June 17, 2004, 03:52

Hello all.

I use starHPC on 4 node linux machines. Master node has a 120Gb hard disk and 2Gb memory, and each slave node has a 40Gb hard disk and 2Gb memory. Each node communicates by mpich through 1000Base-T ethernet. NFS is used to share user's data on master node.

I can choose distributed data and shared data, but I don't know which should I use.

Does anyone know which is better(faster),distributed or shared data?

Thanks advance.

June 17, 2004, 03:55

Well, I am not an expert. But I think you'll get much better performance with distributed data on a cluster, because traffic through network will be bottleneck for performance.

June 17, 2004, 16:36

Distributed data will be faster. That way you are not tieing up the ethernet with I/O while you are running the job. Then the ethernet can be dedicated to message passing and all the I/O occurs only at the start and end of a run.

June 17, 2004, 03:52	Which is faster, distributed or shared data?	#1
Cho Guest Posts: n/a	Hello all. I use starHPC on 4 node linux machines. Master node has a 120Gb hard disk and 2Gb memory, and each slave node has a 40Gb hard disk and 2Gb memory. Each node communicates by mpich through 1000Base-T ethernet. NFS is used to share user's data on master node. I can choose distributed data and shared data, but I don't know which should I use. Does anyone know which is better(faster),distributed or shared data? Thanks advance.

June 17, 2004, 03:55	Re: Which is faster, distributed or shared data?	#2
thomas Guest Posts: n/a	Well, I am not an expert. But I think you'll get much better performance with distributed data on a cluster, because traffic through network will be bottleneck for performance.

June 17, 2004, 16:36	Re: Which is faster, distributed or shared data?	#3
steve Guest Posts: n/a	Distributed data will be faster. That way you are not tieing up the ethernet with I/O while you are running the job. Then the ethernet can be dedicated to message passing and all the I/O occurs only at the start and end of a run.

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
near wall faster	azmir	Siemens	0	December 26, 2007 19:36
Making program run faster	Konstantinos	Siemens	9	March 8, 2006 11:58
Fortran 90 faster than C/C++	B. R. Guirguis	Main CFD Forum	48	March 6, 2006 13:49
MicroTunnel V1.2 - Now 6x faster!	Axel Rohde	Main CFD Forum	0	September 18, 2001 23:34
more RAM or faster CPU??	Fabrizio Grieco	Siemens	11	January 23, 2001 07:35