“I’m working on (or more accurately about to start) a very math
intensive client server system, where the server has to do a metric
ass-load of calculations mostly on 64-bit signed integers on behalf
of client machines. The data are all going to be in ram, and
multi-cpu support is a good thing.”
“Would you recommend a PPC machine over a x86 machine for a task
like this?…”
“If you’re going to be working with 64-bit numbers, I would try
to do a real-world test. That is, get Athlon, Alpha, Pentium 4, and
PowerPC 7400 (G4) machines, and try some tests to see how quickly
each of them handle integers that big. I know the PowerPC 7400 (G4)
has an awesome vector calculation module (128-bit vector registers
can be fun), but that’s not the same thing as integers. The 7400
doesn’t have any specialized integer units, whereas the Athlon and
P4 do. (I’m pretty sure of this, but you should definitely do your
homework before making any decisions based on this information.) It
might be great for decompressing video, but for hard-core
(sounding) tasks like handling 64-bit signed integers, I’d
definitely test everything possible. Definitely try the Alpha and
MIPS, too. Alpha’s sort of known for handling these sorts of
things….”