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Discussion Groups | FPGA-CPU | best pc for Foundation 3.1?

This list is for discussion of the design and implementation of field-programmable gate array based processors and integrated systems. It is also for discussion and community support of the XSOC Project (see http://www.fpgacpu.org/xsoc).

best pc for Foundation 3.1? - Campbell, John - Oct 1 9:35:00 2001

Hi
I'm running Foundation 3.1 and I've got to cut down
my compile time. Given the prices for pc's I'm
seeing on the web, its time to upgrade my 400Mhz p2.

Does anyone have an opinion on the relative benefit of
(a) dual CPUs
(b) fast clock
(c) lots of RAM
(d) fast disks

Thanks. -jc






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Re: best pc for Foundation 3.1? - Josh Fryman - Oct 2 7:07:00 2001

> (a) dual CPUs

unfortunately, most tools don't take advantage of multiple CPUs. the OS
might to schedule the P&R on one cpu only to give you a performance gain
that way, but since the OS is usually less than 5% of the time a job
runs...

> (b) fast clock

always useful. the different between an 800M and 1G P3 i've noted is a
bit less than the scaling of the CPU speed. it's a memory bound job,
not necessarily CPU. given enough memory, it should scale with CPU
speed.

also be aware that unless code is recompiled to use the P4 scheduling,
you won't get huge gains from moving to the P4. i don't know when the
tool makers will release P4 optimized versions of their core code - if
ever.

> (c) lots of RAM

most P&R of large designs (eg, microprocessors) is a memory bound job.
you really want a lot of memory - like 1GB plus. if you're not doing
such large jobs, then less is ok. your goal is to avoid swap while
doing P&R. also look for bigger caches.

> (d) fast disks

if you've gotta swap... a good scsi-ultra/3 raid 0 array is hard to
beat. really dang expensive, tho.





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Re: best pc for Foundation 3.1? - Martin.J Thompson - Oct 2 9:04:00 2001

>Hi
>I'm running Foundation 3.1 and I've got to cut down
>my compile time. Given the prices for pc's I'm
>seeing on the web, its time to upgrade my 400Mhz p2.
>
>Does anyone have an opinion on the relative benefit of
>(a) dual CPUs
>(b) fast clock
>(c) lots of RAM
>(d) fast disks You've already had good advice posted - I'll give you my benchmarking results that were posted to comp.arch.fpga recently ...
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&threadm=uu1xqjbud.fsf%40trw.com&rnum=2&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dpentium%2Bbenchmark%2Bfpga%26hl%3Den%26rnum%3D2%26selm%3Duu1xqjbud.fsf%2540trw.com

Summary (formatted better in the URL above):
The two test systems were:
System 1: Pentium 3, 800MHz, 512MB PC100 SDRAM
System 2: Pentium 4, 1700MHz, 1024MB PC800 RDRAM
Mean of results 115%

Cheers,
Martin >Thanks. -jc
>
>To Post a message, send it to:
>To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to:





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Re: best pc for Foundation 3.1? - Martin.J Thompson - Oct 2 9:04:00 2001

>Hi
>I'm running Foundation 3.1 and I've got to cut down
>my compile time. Given the prices for pc's I'm
>seeing on the web, its time to upgrade my 400Mhz p2.
>
>Does anyone have an opinion on the relative benefit of
>(a) dual CPUs
>(b) fast clock
>(c) lots of RAM
>(d) fast disks You've already had good advice posted - I'll give you my benchmarking results that were posted to comp.arch.fpga recently ...
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&threadm=uu1xqjbud.fsf%40trw.com&rnum=2&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dpentium%2Bbenchmark%2Bfpga%26hl%3Den%26rnum%3D2%26selm%3Duu1xqjbud.fsf%2540trw.com

Summary (formatted better in the URL above):
The two test systems were:
System 1: Pentium 3, 800MHz, 512MB PC100 SDRAM
System 2: Pentium 4, 1700MHz, 1024MB PC800 RDRAM
Mean of results 115%

Cheers,
Martin >Thanks. -jc
>
>To Post a message, send it to:
>To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to:



______________________________
Stellaris® MCU Family: New Parts, New Package, New Price.


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Re: best pc for Foundation 3.1? - Leon Heller - Oct 2 12:24:00 2001


>Hi
>I'm running Foundation 3.1 and I've got to cut down
>my compile time. Given the prices for pc's I'm
>seeing on the web, its time to upgrade my 400Mhz p2.
>
>Does anyone have an opinion on the relative benefit of
>(a) dual CPUs
>(b) fast clock
>(c) lots of RAM
>(d) fast disks

I use a 1 GHz Athlon, 512 Mbytes of RAM and a fastish hard drive. It works
quite well with the Xilinx WebPack and Altera tools, and wasn't expensive.
IMHO the whole system needs to be optimised, rather than just part of it,
for optimum performance.

Leon
--
Leon Heller, G1HSM Tel: +44 1327 359058 Email:
My web page: http://www.geocities.com/leon_heller
My low-cost Altera Flex design kit: http://www.leonheller.com
_________________________________________________________________
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