Re: Information gathering exercise

On Fri, 19 Feb 2010, Gordon Milne wrote:

> We are currently running on 2.4GHz Pentium 4 desktops that are maxed
> out with 2GB RAM and around 100GB disk (usually made up of a 30GB
> system drive and a 70GB data drive). The original systems were 512MB
> RAM and a 30GB disk drive. Each desktop has a 22inch and 19inch
> monitor attached to it. Our work centres around Java technologies with
> some Linux for a complex scientific instrument. Our principle IDE is
> IDEA. One of the guys won't use IDEA past version 6 due to lack of
> responsiveness. I use release 8 and put up with the sluggishness on my
> ancient hardware. But, I have had enough of this self abuse and
> bruising of my brain.

Java'rish things tend to be utter memory hogs, compared to emacs / gcc
/ cross-compilers / C/C++ unit tests we do.

So our memory requirements are probably less than yours.

> Apparently, he had someone visit our offices recently and
> that person pronounced our systems as old, but good enough. I never
> met this person. No one on my team met this person. So I have no idea
> how he gauged our systems suitability for purpose.

Helen Fry perhaps?
<a href="http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-02-16/" title="Dilbert.com"><img src="http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/80000/2000/200/82272/82272.strip.gif" border="0" alt="Dilbert.com" /></a>


> I'd like to know what kind of hardware you are developing on. I am
> interested in the processor , the RAM and the disk size. If you can
> also give me some idea of the principle development task that might be
> useful too. I am less interested in the OS you are using. I intend
> using this information as data to push my argument for desktop
> upgrades.

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'model name'
model name	: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad  CPU   Q8200  @ 2.33GHz

passmark 3254

cat /proc/meminfo | grep  MemTotal
MemTotal:        4015964 kB

Disk drive is 160Gb.

> Finally, I would be grateful if you can tell me your locality. I am
> based in Christchurch, New Zealand and I get the feeling that my
> CEO-elect might be more responsive to my needs if I can show that
> other, local companies, are.

So are we.

> p.s. FWIW, my gut feel, given the age of our machines, and how long it
> takes for us to replace hardware, was that we should upgrade to quad
> core desktops with 4GB RAM that can be grown to 16GB. As for disk, I
> was aiming to start with 500GB drives. I am using a very naive metric
> for this upgrade but our current CPUs have a passmark
> (http://www.cpubenchmark.net) of 322 and I'd like to see us working
> with systems having a passmark of 4000 or more.

Carter's Universal Device Purchasing Algorithm (has worked for me for
over two decades now)....

Plot the "buck per bang graph" for any metric cpu speed / disk space / ...

There is _always_ a minimum.

Devices at the minimum are in the "So cheap they must be cheating"
category. eg. Winmodems / ink jet printers etc.

Devices just to the right of the minimum are the best quality /
performance.

Devices way to the left are "Paying for the Brand Name, not the value".

Devices way to the right are "bleeding edge", expensive and
buggy. Normally you can buy two "just to the right of minimum" and
cluster to get better value / performance.

Hence always purchase "Just to the right of the minimum buck per bang"

I have also tied them all into a distcc compile farm and we're
motivating for a big build server for the following reasons...

  * Virtualize and Archive old build environments / toolchains so we
    can rebuild and patch old releases.

  * Quicker "check in / all (of many) product variants built, all files
    statically checked with splint and all unit tests run" turn
    around. ie. The critical factor in what keeps the mainline in a
    "green" or "broken" state is how long this takes. (Currently hours,
    want it down to minutes)

    The mainline being in a "broken" state is a major hit on
    productivity.




John Carter                             Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639
Tait Electronics                        Fax   : (64)(3) 359 4632
PO Box 1645 Christchurch                Email : [email protected]
New Zealand