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Socoder -> Off Topic -> Dual Pentium IIIs

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Thu, 07 Feb 2008, 18:52
HoboBen
I have two Pentium IIIs, which I think are both the same make (or roughly the same, anyway) so I was thinking of putting them both (well, one's already in it) into an old machine and having it use both processors.

Two questions:

Is it possible to do something like that yourself?

However would I do something like that?!

Sorry, I'm a bit useless when it comes to hardware.

And good links appreciated.

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Fri, 08 Feb 2008, 07:36
JL235
Maybe, you can get motherboards which support two cpu's. They are more common now, but still pricy. I don't know if you would find one that would support pentium 3's, maybe, I'd guess not.

You can however ethernet machines together in order to share their processor power and use 1 virtual processor. Dunno how you'd do it, my distributed systems module hasn't gotten that far yet. But I presume there is software out there already which could do it.
Sat, 19 Apr 2008, 11:16
HoboBen
Oh, I forgot about this thread!

I didn't have two machines to network together, I had one tiny machine and an extra Pentium 3... it's not doing much else than functioning as a table, but it does make a decent Apache test server, when it's turned on.

Those PS3's are neat stuff though. IIRC, there used to be a similar deal with a few hundred PS2s linked together.

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Sat, 19 Apr 2008, 15:17
Scherererer
my computer has dual cpu's, and i've seen machines with two pentium III's in them (a friend of mine has a rack-mount server with dual p3's), but i don't know where you'd buy a motherboard for even a single p3 anymore though.

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Sat, 19 Apr 2008, 16:36
codingmonkey
The computer I'm currently using contains
an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
2.0 GHZ

Yes, the Playstation 3 is interesting.
Neat as you say.
I'm sure someone has or will link them together for
more powerful core processing.
Parallel Programming too.
Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 03:53
JL235
CodingMonkey Yes, the Playstation 3 is interesting.
Neat as you say.
I'm sure someone has or will link them together for
more powerful core processing.
Parallel Programming too.

First, Folding@Home (I run it, I hope you will too).

Second, Sony has built a server out of PS3's but probably only as a marketing exercise.
Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 05:29
mole
Coincidence? My brother was researching this exact topic today.... And I just went downstairs and he is running F@H.


Anyway, I am interested in the possibility of utilising this technology to boost my computer's performance... How possible/plausable is this?
Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 06:54
TheMadProff
Wow, I was working on an idea about this yesterday...

If you just have a spare p3, then it's impossible to convert a motherboard to run two processors (well, i'm 99.999999999% certain). The two options you have are to either get a dual processor motherboard, or get another motherboard, network the two computers, and share the cycles. Doing this, you could also set one up as a machine to just do odd jobs, like host files on a network, download large files, act as a firewall...

However, there don't seem to be any programs on the net which basically allow you to share a processor over a network. People on forums have said they have seen it done at live events, in person, but i can't find anything.

The only thing i did find, is something called GPU Linky, but this is only designed for the Gnutella P2P protocol, though you might be able to use it over a network, just without downloading anything.

Also, does anyone have any experience on running Folding@Home on legacy/very old Hardware, and how well it runs...?

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''It works, but I'm not sure why it works...''
Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 08:02
JL235
Folding@Home will probably run very slowly on old hardware, it runs slowly on mine. However it also automatically sets it's priority in Windows to be low so it will only be running when your CPU is idle.

When people use multiple PS3 for doing large computational tasks, no they don't do anything to the hardware. There is software outthere which allows you to have multiple PC's virtualised into one virtual CPU running at the equivalent to a single 20ghz CPU.
Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 08:38
mike_g
If you havent got a stream processor then running folding@home is going to be a waste of electricity. A cell processor, or modern GPU is ideal for this sort of stuff.
Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 08:59
TheMadProff
@ JL235 - Do youknow what this software is, because I couldn't find it, and I searched for ages...

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Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 13:10
Scherererer
Decided to try out Folding@Home, set it up on the spare box sitting next to me and am monitering its cpu usage using Snooping Cat </cheapadvert>, but i set the moniter interval to every 5 seconds because it didn't need to be that real-time. It seems to be using memory more than anything, but there's some odd cpu spikes in there.

screenie:


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Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 14:02
mole
@JL235: Yeah, same request as mad proff, do yoiu know more about this software?
Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 14:38
JL235
No, I've only read about projects that have used it. They might have also used their own custom set-up.
Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 16:20
Scherererer
I'll ammend my former statement: now its using 100% of the cpu 100% of the time, and half the memory usage it was before now that its worked itself out.

(btw its a P4 w/ hyperthreading & 1.5 GB of RAM)

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Sun, 20 Apr 2008, 18:43
codingmonkey

Very interesting.
The information about the software to use in
simulation of protein folds.
Including even the interactions of molecules.
Molecular dynamics.
Mon, 21 Apr 2008, 01:51
codingmonkey

To have the processing power to carry out simulations of the protein foldings. Molecular dynamics too.

More interest in core processors too.

Mon, 21 Apr 2008, 05:47
JL235
The Intel macs are far more powerful then their PowerPC onces, that's why they switched. But IBM are planning to use the cell processor in their blades, if they haven't started making some already.
Mon, 21 Apr 2008, 15:22
Scherererer
Part of why I think they switched to Intel is because apple realised there just isn't the same kind of money in hardware that there is in software. In a few years, when everyone out there realises that mac hardware is overexpensive, you're going to see releases of Mac OSX (or OSXI if its that far away) that will run natively on all sorts of PC's.

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Mon, 21 Apr 2008, 17:08
mike_g
Wasent It was motorolla that used to do the Mac chips? And yeah, apparently they couldent be bothered with macs as there was more money in phones and shit, and of course, macs suck.

So, apple had no-one left to go to but Intel. I'm sure they wouldent have done it out of choice - it would hurt their sorry image.
Mon, 21 Apr 2008, 18:33
Stealth
Although it's still illegal to install Mac OS X on non Apple branded hardware. So *technically* they still get rights over selling the hardware.

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Quit posting and try Google.
Mon, 21 Apr 2008, 18:35
HoboBen
It's also illegal to make weapons of mass destruction while listening to iTunes.

Damnit - foiled, again!

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