Subject: CCL: SP2 vs POWER Challenge

From: Ludek Matyska <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 1994 09:59:11 +0200 (MET DST)

Dear netters,

we in the Czech Republic are in the process of purchasing some ``entry
level'' supercomputer-like machines and the decision to be made is
between the DEC 7000/630, POWER Challenge and IBM SP2 computers. Due to
the budget restrictions we are not able to buy intially anything more
powerfull than 4 processor machines, but we expect to get more funding in
the forthcoming year(s) (but never more for say 15--20 CPU's).

These computers (we will buy 2 of them) will be available for the
whole academic (universities) community, but computational chemistry will
take a substantial part of their computational resources. I am therefore
looking for people with experince of any two of the above mentioned
machines, preferably with IBM SP2 and POWER Challenge. We know quite a few
(sure not all :-) theoretical pros and contras of the underlying
architectures, but we are missing the real experience. I would like to ask
you to send me any infromation about the practical comparison between these
two architectures, esp. with just a few nodes. Our goal is to start with the
use of the facilities as soon as possible after the delivery with the
specific target for people for whom the ordinary workstations (SGI, IBM)
with up to 128MB RAM are not enough.

Thank you very much in advance for any information sent (please send the
info directly to me not to bother other uninterested people of the CCL).

Sincerely yours,

					Ludek Matyska

Department of Information Technology
Faculty of Informatics
and
Institute of Computer Science
Masaryk University
Buresova 20
602 00 Brno				Fax: ++42-5-41212747
Czech Republic				Phone: ++42-5-41321237 ext. 384
e-mail: [email-masked]		       ++42-5-740267