Looking for a big Unix box
Ron Nash
nash at ucselx.sdsu.edu
Wed Mar 7 04:59:01 AEST 1990
> I am throwing this to the collective net wisdom (:-). I am asking for
> suggestions and any experiences good or bad to guide us in our search.
> The main uses of the computer will be teaching Unix and programming,
> and research. We have Macsyma and Lisp users and neural-network
> research that can be quite a drain.
>
> We are looking for a Unix engine that will support at least 100
> concurrent users. It would be nice if it could be expanded to support
> more users if needed. The Unix should be BSD or be BSD compatible. A
> major concern is compatability of BSD software.
>
Here is the summary of responses. Convex 1, Dec 1, Encore 1, Mips 1,
Sequent's Symmetry 7, Pyramid 2, and two people are still looking.
I would appreciate any additional comments.
Thank all of you that responded! It has been very helpfull.
--
Ron Nash
San Diego State University
Internet: nash at ucselx.sdsu.edu
UUCP: ucsd!sdsu!ucselx!nash
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We've been shopping recently for machines to replace our now-outdated
VAX 8650's. This is what we've been looking at:
Solbourne 20+ mips/processor, 4 max.
Fast IPI disks on the way
soon (can't give you figures, sorry).
Just announced 40 mips/processor later this year.
Sun 20+ mips - IPI disks now.
MIPS 55 mips for their new ECL machines.
Pyramid Current crop of machines based on a dual sysV/BSD
universe and on the proprietary Pyramid processor
with 9+ mips/processor, 14 max.
Design is good, but on the way out. Other machines
based on MIPS chips with 20+ mips/processor available
in 4th quater.
You might also want to look at HP and Silicon Graphics.
Good luck.
---
Name: Christopher J. Calabrese
Brain loaned to: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
att!ulysses!cjc cjc at ulysses.att.com
Obligatory Quote: ``Anyone who would tell you that would also try and sell you the Brooklyn Bridge.''
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We are looking for the same kind of thing. At the moment, we are considering:
Multiflow Trace 7/300
Encore Multimax (model 520, I think)
DEC 5400 (2 of them, I think)
Solbourne ???
MIPS RC6280
Sun 4/490
SGI Iris 4D (4 cpus)
IBM RS/6000 530
The list is ordered from most to least BSD-like. We could live with anything
above on the list above the SGI; it and IBM are too much SysV.
I would be interested in any other information you can gather. We have to
decide what to buy within three weeks or so.
We have some benchmarks on some of these boxes. I will mail them to you if
you like.
-Guy Middleton, University of Waterloo gamiddleton at watmath.waterloo.edu
(+1 519 885 1211 x3472) gamiddleton at watmath.uwaterloo.ca
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Tough question, since most of the really big iron has a
sysV fixation. The apps you mentioned are not floating
point intensive, more on the symbolic side. I think you
need something like a 4 cpu Solbourne or a ... uhm ....
who is it that makes the vliw box? darn... Anyway,
something like that with an FDDI link to your disk
servers, say 3 or four sun4s. Put this monster in the
center of your network as a cycle server and scatter
smaller boxes -- sparcstation1s or something -- around
for interactive junk. put the users on X terminals
with their default sessions on the satellite cpus, have
the cpu-intensive programs automagically run on the
cycle server.
--
Steve Nuchia South Coast Computing Services (713) 964-2462
"You have no scars on your face, and you cannot handle pressure." - Billy Joel
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We have also just started a search for a similar box, so I would
be very much interested in seeing a summary posted.
We are currently looking at Convex (the "air-cooled Cray").
They have expandable models and are claiming POSIX compatiblity,
rather than BSD or SYSV. Their compilers supposedly can
vectorize and parallelize to take advantage of multiple
processors. In the next week or so we will give them a number
of programs/data-sets which they will run on different
models with and without the vector/parallel options.
Other features are high disk transfer rates and I/O processors
(which they claim allows support of large numbers of
interactive users).
As may be obvious, the above info is from Convex's sales/marketing
folks, so I am definitely interested in less biased opinions
on the capabilities and reliability of this box and anything similar.
--
Joe Hamlin <hamlin at blackbird.afit.af.mil>
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Looking for a bix UNIX box ? Look at the DEC 6000 series machines.
Wonderfull boxes, love them..can't say enough good about them, and I
don't work for DEC. (or have much to do with them them either, just use
the equipment...)
Peter Theune.
Johns Hopkins University, the Applied Physics Laboratory
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You should probably speak to Encore for a configuration of that size.
Boston University ... department of Computer Science has an installation
fairly similar to what you describe.
Encore builds MIMD parallel processors, which means they are sort of
like Vaxes or other minis except that can have 2-20 CPUs (current
architecture, 40 on their next system.) The CPU boards each have 2
CPUs. The company was founded by, among others, Gordon Bell who led
design for, well, most of the systems DEC has produced in the last 30
years (PDP-10, PDP-11, Vax.) Rumor had it that the Encore was his
design for the next generation of Vax but DEC wouldn't go for it, so
he pulled Encore together. But that's just rumor.
Their current system is based on the NS32532 which is about an 8 MIPS
CPU, so the MIPS range is 16-160. To be honest, it's difficult to put
20 CPUs into their box although 16 should be fairly easy (the problem
is just that memory goes in the same slots and there's some natural
growth of memory for time-sharing systems as you add CPUs, not much of
a limitation, 16*8 = 128MIPS.) Note that all MIPS ratings of course
are aggregate.
The system can be bought with either Mach, BSD or SYSV. I'd strongly
recommend either Mach or BSD. Their Mach is being adopted for OSF's
OSF/1 operating system release, so I would recommend looking very
closely at Mach.
They plan to move to the Motorola 88K, probably Mach will be the first
release (ask them.)
If I can be of any further assistance don't hesitate to get in touch.
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | {xylogics,uunet}!world!bzs | bzs at world.std.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
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Although neither is really available yet, I recommend the MIPS R6000-based
box running 4.4BSD.
Chris
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Make sure you look at Sequent's Symmetry line. We have Dynix 3,
a BSD 4.[23] port of UNIX, and Dynix/PTX, a SysV.3 version. It's all
based on 80386 (ask them about 80486 if you care, though :->) processers,
and the OS runs symmetric multiprocessing. The nice part about it as
compared to discrete workstations of some sort is that on an idle system
a single user gets the benefit of a whole lot more horsepower than any
single workstation user is going to get. I can get our sales office to
give you a call if you'd like.
So much for my biased point of view. I hope I've at least
interested you enough to take a look!
Regards,
Andy Valencia
Dynix 3 kernel group
...!uunet!sequent!vandys
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Take a look into getting a Sequent Symetry (one of our machines is an
S27, purely development). It runs DYNIX which is sortof 4.2 level and
allows you to use System V2.0 utilities if you choose. You can choose
to be in either the bsd "universe" or att "universe." I have compiled
a couple of large sources for bsd machines and had no difficulties,
whatsoever. It is _supposed_ to be fully bsd'ish.
As to power, you can put in up to twenty processor boards, each of
which has two parallel 80386's. The text segment for the kernel is
shared, they each have their own data segment and use semaphores and
whatnot for synchronization. They are becomming quite popular with
travel agencies (big, big, not boiler room, mind you). They run on
a multibus, but you can use SCSI peripherials (standard if you buy
it from UNISYS, I don''t know about from Sequent). It is a very fast
and does not take up alot of space. The base unit is about 3.5'x3.5'x3.5'.
The expansion cabinet is supposed to be a little bigger.
The nifty thing is that you can let your students do driver work for
a single processor environment, and then turn around and have them
make the same driver work under parralel processing (they will love
you for this :-) ).
cbp
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I suggest a Sequent symetry system like this one...
System Configuration:
type no slic flags revision
MEM/1w 0 2 00000000 00.03.02 size=40.0Mb base=0x00000000 ileave-lo
MEM/1w 1 20 00000000 00.03.02 size=40.0Mb base=0x00000000 ileave-hi
MBAD 0 24 00000000 00.05.01 f/w version=6
MBAD 1 26 00000000 00.05.01 f/w version=6
SCED 0 28 00000000 02.12.00 ver=42 host=71 enet=080047000fa8 local
ZDC 0 34 00000000 00.02.00 f/w version=14
ZDC 1 38 00000000 00.02.01 f/w version=16
ZDC 2 40 00000000 00.02.00 f/w version=14
CADM 0 0 00000000 01.03.00 sysid 0x000231 front panel type 0
PROC/386w 00000000 00.06.01 16MHz 2*32K FPA: no. 0(slic 4), 1(5), 2(8)
PROC/386w 00000000 00.06.01 16MHz 2*32K FPA: no. 3(slic 9), 4(12), 5(13)
PROC/386w 00000000 00.06.01 16MHz 2*32K FPA: no. 6(slic 16), 7(17), 8(18)
PROC/386w 00000000 00.06.01 16MHz 2*32K FPA: no. 9(slic 19)
[ Thats, 10 CPUS, 10 floating point units, 80Mb memory, 3 disk controllers ]
We can put ~320 users on it all doing things....
kayessbee
--
Lightning strikes! Maybe once, maybe twice. Oh, and it lights up the night!
Kevin Braunsdorf, ksb at cc.purdue.edu, pur-ee!ksb, purdue!ksb
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Look into Sequent. My company looked at them, but didn't have large enough
processing needs to justify one. They are parallel Unix (Dynix) boxes capable
of supporting 8 to 1000 users on from 2 to 30 80386 tightly coupled processors.
What a Machine!
--
Dewey Paciaffi
eddjp at althea.UUCP
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I'm not so sure a big central machine is the way to go for LISP and
MacSyma users but;
This machine (a Sequent) keeps about 100 rn users happy (I have yet to see
it slow down). Not cutting edge and not straight BSD but it does
seem to take a lot of I/O processing well.
In an environment such as you describe I'd guess a cluster approach (where
several identical processors share a common set of drives and each new process
(or at least; each new user) gets thrown to whatever processor is least loaded
at the time would be a reasonable approach.
--
-dave fetrow- fetrow at bones.biostat.washington.edu
dfetrow at uwalocke (bitnet) {uunet}!uw-beaver!uw-entropy!fetrow
"CP/M: Remember when fast, small, useful and clean were good?"
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Burlington Coat Factory has bought 4 Sequent Symmetry machines, and
we're VERY happy with them. (We started out with 1, and liked it so much
that we bought 3 more).
Sequent's boxes are (coarse-grained) parallel processors. You can plug
in more processor boards as system load increases. Our biggest machine
has twenty '386 processors, and supports 200 users without even slowing
down. (Right now we have 110 users coming in over an X.25 switch, and
30 more through telnet, and the machine is only using 20% of its
processors).
Parallism comes "for free" when a process forks. If you pipe the
output of one program into the input of another, both programs will
execute *simultaneously* on different processors.
The operating system is dual-universe (like Pyramid) -- so you get your
choice of BSD or SysV. The underlying kernel is BSD. We've never had
any problems porting programs; they usually compile without modification.
(The kernel is derived from BSD 4.2, not 4.3, if that's an issue).
Call me if you have any questions you'd like to ask.
--
"Live justly, love gently, walk humbly." Andy Behrens
andyb at coat.com
or: andyb%coat.com at dartmouth.edu
or: {uunet,rutgers}!dartvax!coat.com!andyb
Burlington Coat, HCI 61 Box 1B, Lebanon, N.H. 03766 (603) 448-5000
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You might want to check into Sequents. We have a Sequent Symmetry
with over 200 logins, maybe 100 or so active at one time, plus at least
one large database crunching away constantly, and the highest I've seen
the load get is 2, when someone in QA fired up about 15 compiles in
parallel, at the same time that someone had started up a second
database.
Happy computer hunting!
--woodstock
--
"What I like is when you're looking and thinking and looking
and thinking...and suddenly you wake up." - Hobbes
nhess at oracle.com or ...!uunet!oracle!nhess or (415) 598-3046
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Consider a system from Pyramid Technologies. We have an
early 90x and it is a rock: with a single CPU configuration
and about 30 users average we have had essentially no
unscheduled downtime for almost three years. Their new
MIServer systems can be configured with from 1 to 12
12 VUPS CPUs so the system has room to grow. The I/O
controllers have a lot of smarts so they offload quite a
lot of processing from the kernel.
They have a "dual universe" system which is really BSD
but provides a very handy and complete SysV environment
(we use BSD almost exclusively except to compile SysV
sources, which we then install under the BSD universe).
UCSD has a bunch of them but the biggest local installation
of the latest Pyramid models is a PacBell.
Jerry
--
/ Gerald Hall, UNIX SysAdmin, (619) 587-3065
/ Calma - A Division of Prime Computer Inc.
/ 9805 Scranton Road, San Diego, CA 92121
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I would suggest you take a look at machine by Pyramid Technology out
of Mountain View, California, as well as those made by Sequent Systems
out of Beaverton, Oregon. There are probably a few other
manufacturers of such high-power, large capacity multi-user Unix
systems. Maybe even the top end NCR Tower machines, and the similar
top end machines from Unisys could handle that large a load, although
both are System V oriented. Pyramid and Sequent both offer BSD
compatible systems, I believe. I know Pyramid does.
--
Chris Johnson DOMAIN: chris at c2s.mn.org
Com Squared Systems, Inc. ATT: +1 612 452 9522
Mendota Heights, MN USA FAX: +1 612 452 3607
--
Ron Nash
San Diego State University
Internet: nash at ucselx.sdsu.edu
UUCP: ucsd!sdsu!ucselx!nash
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