Best performance per dollar for CPU systems is usually one generation past mid core count single socket system, such as Intel Haswell or Broadwell Core i7. Might get lucky and find eg 12-core Xeon processors cheap now.
If you want lots of MPI ranks per dollar, look at Intel Knights Corner Xeon Phi cards in a cheap host. You can also go small with an array of Raspberry PI, Arduino, Adapteva Parallella, Intel NUC, etc. However, if you are doing non-commercial research, you should just apply for supercomputer time at a government-sponsored center like NERSC or XSEDE. Jeff (Who works for Intel, and thus may be accused of excessive familiarity with Intel products) On Friday, May 20, 2016, MM <finjulh...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > > Say I don't have access to a actual cluster, yet I'm considering cloud > compute solutions for my MPI program ultimately, but such a cost may be > highly prohibitive at the moment. > In terms of middle ground, if I am interesting in compute only, no > storage, what are possible hardware solutions out there to deploy my MPI > program? > By no storage, I mean that my control linux box running the frontend of > the program, but is also part of the mpi communicator always gathers all > results and stores them locally. > At the moment, I have a second box over ethernet. > > I am looking at something like Intel Compute Stick (is it possible at all > to buy a few, is linux running on them, the arch seems to be the same > x86-64, is there a possible setup with tcp for those and have openmpi over > tcp)? > > Is it more cost-effective to look at extra regular linux commodity boxes? > If a no hard drive box is possible, can the executables of my MPI program > sendable over the wire before running them? > > If we exclude GPU or other nonMPI solutions, and cost being a primary > factor, what is progression path from 2boxes to a cloud based solution > (amazon and the like...) > > Regards, > MM > -- Jeff Hammond jeff.scie...@gmail.com http://jeffhammond.github.io/
