jim@pythagoras.doc.ic.ac.uk (Jim Crammond) (03/05/90)
In my experience you can get pretty consistant timings on a normal system with having to use tmp_affinity. This is, I think, because a running processor will not be interrupted if there is an idle processor available to respond to interrupts and other distractions. So all you need is a quiet system. I have used the "cluster" facility on the BBN Butterfly - I find it a pain. It does not take many users to take away most of the machine and they always take more than they need; what's particularly annoying is when people run benchmarks in a large cluster and logout - many a time i have seen that the benchmark has apparently finished but the cluster isn't released. In my opinion a case of a good idea in theory but not in practice. -Jim.