BY URNArtichoke | JANUARY 8, 2019 10:16 AM PST I need a machine (could be a PC, Workstation, or Server) that had a LOT

[Artichoke]

Hello everyone! I'm Leslie posting from central Texas, USA and I really need help from some computer experts

I need a machine (could be a PC, Workstation, or Server) that has a LOT of processors . . and a Windows OS. I recently used one that had 24 dual core processors, which was outstanding for my needs - unfortunately I don't have the specs for it. The program I run uses one processor at a time - it cannot take advantage of a hyperthreaded machine - it need a whole bunch of individual processors (I can break up my runs into a bunch of little pieces, and merge them back together at the end).

This is for work, so I doubt they'd go for someone building me something out of their house, I'll need to order it from a reputable company. Price is going to be important of course - likely a 10K max. Any suggestions?

 

[PP Mguire]

So to clarify, by 24 dual core processors you mean a 24 core CPU with hyper-threading? By one processor at a time you mean 1 physical core at a time?

 

[Artichoke]

Well - sorry I don't know enough to answer your question exactly. I'm running a very old program that takes a long time to run. Each individual run cannot take advantage of multiple processors or cores. The machine I mentioned I thought was a 24-processor, each processor with a dual core. But - it could have really been a 24-core, each core with a dual processor. I don't really know how it works. But on that machine, I could initiate 48 runs at the same time. I'm hoping to accomplish something similar with the new computer.

 

[PP Mguire]

Without specific detail on threading it's really hard to specifically recommend something. The reason I'm saying this is because what you're saying doesn't make much sense at face value. You won't have a 24 processor machine that is dual core, which is why I'm assuming you are referring to Hyper-Threading. Dual-core, dual processor, or "24-processor" are all different things I believe you're using interchangeably as you don't know the specific meaning to what you are referring to.

So, to sum it all up.
Processor = the physical CPU chip inside the machine.
Dual Processor = 2 CPUs or 2 physical chips inside the machine.
Core = a physical addressable core inside the CPU.
Hyper-Threading (or SMT for AMD) = a virtual logical core paired with a physical core (IE a dual-core CPU will show 4 threads in task manager)

So the saying "24-core each core with a dual processor" is trying to say you have 2 CPUs per 24 cores.

An image to explain what I mean. I have attached a task manager screenshot from one of my servers. Inside this server it has 2 Xeon 2670 CPUs so that makes it dual processor or "2P" in the server world. Each of these CPUs has 8 physical cores with Hyper-Threading making 16 physical cores and 32 threads.

The yellow box shows total amount of threads combined.
The red box shows 2 sockets meaning dual processor.
The green box shows the 16 physical cores.
The blue box shows 32 logical processors or 32 threads meaning 16 physical cores and 16 virtual cores.

Making an educated guess, your software cannot utilize Hyper-Threaded cores or "virtual cores" so the machine you ran this on was a dual processor machine with 2 24 core CPUs to make up 48 instances. You can do this by finding any server that has a pair of AMD EPYC CPUs in it. 2 32 core processors would give you 64 instances at a time and should fit in your 10k budget as I'm assuming this project does not require a ton of RAM.

 

[Artichoke]

Thank you so much! That's exactly what what I meant - looking for a lot of individual logical processors. I searched for AMD EPYC and found some good options. Appreciate your help!