Dear Kent, Geraint, Volkmar, .......

I was due to post the results of the benchmarking process just after to
Christmas, but got delayed due to a number of nice and not-so-nice
events. Basically we got hacked, and our entire SUN network needed to be
re-installed. Fortunately no data was lost, and we're back up and
running now.

Anyway, following the recent activity on the mailbase, I've decided to
post the results at http://painweb.tripod.com (sorry about the banner
advertising, but our webserver is still down after the attack). 

This is always going to be a works in-progress sort of site, since I
hope people will continue to send me new stats as and when they get new
machines.

I hope you find the information presented both interesting and useful
when it comes to making an informed choice about which platform to run
SPM on. I'm sure people will have questions and comments, and I will try
to answer these as quickly as possible.

Yours,

Jon.  

Jonathan Brooks (Ph.D.)
Research Fellow & Systems Administrator
MARIARC, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
Tel: +44 151 794 5629 Fax: +44 151 794 5635
Web: http://www.mariarc.liv.ac.uk (when I get it working again)


-----Original Message-----
From: SPM (Statistical Parametric Mapping) [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Kent A. Kiehl
Sent: 04 April 2002 14:22
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What computer and operating system for SPM?

Dear SPMers,
    I appear to be one of the lonely who still advocates buying Sun
workstations over other boxes.   (I think I am going to talk to my rep
about
commissions ;-)

While Suns are a little slower (note there is a new model out - Sun
Blade
2000) than PCs, I tend to weigh stability as important as speed - and we
just never have any problems with the Suns - they are up for months at a
time.   Seeing as our normal procedure is to start an SPM batch process
and
go home, I don't really mind if the process take till 2:00am or till
5:00am
to finish, what I like is that it reliably finishes on the Suns.

Also, we have DVD-RWs installed in our all Sun Blades and they are also
very
stable.

New academic pricing lists the Sun Blade 1000 at ~$7k US.    Note that
they
also sell a new 24inch LCD for about $2k US.

Just to echo other list members sentiments, seems you already have lots
of
experience maintaining Suns, adding another (perhaps unfamiliar)
operating
system might be a recipe for sys admin headaches.
My two cents.

Best regards,
Kent

-------------------------------------------------
Kent A. Kiehl, Ph.D.
Director - Clinical Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
Institute of Living/Hartford Hospital

Assistant Clinical Professor
Department of Psychiatry
Yale University School of Medicine

Mailing address and contact information:

Institute of Living
200 Retreat Avenue
Clinical Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory
Hartford, CT USA 06106
Tel: 860-545-7385; Fax: 860-545-7510
Email [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Geraint Rees" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2002 7:59 AM
Subject: Re: What computer and operating system for SPM?


Hi David,

Dual Xeon (P-IV) workstations are also worth looking at; they're cheap
and
with SMT the new Xeons should have even more zip (though Matlab is
single
threaded, you can run more processes). My 1.8GHz*2 Linux/W2K non-SMT
system
comfortably outperforms comparable Sun Blade & Ultra 60 boxes. Even
bolting
on a DVD-RW for backup, lots of local storage and a big flatscreen
monitor,
it's not going to be much more than £4K for a typical configuration,
which
is a lot cheaper than Sun...

Best,

Geraint
--
Geraint Rees MRCP PhD           | Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
[log in to unmask]        | University College London
+44-(0)20-7679-5496 (work)      | Alexandra House
+44-(0)20-7813-2835 (fax)       | 17 Queen Square
www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~grees    | London WC1N 3AR


> Dear David,
>
> On Thu, 4 Apr 2002, David Brennan wrote:
>
>> We want the best power for our pound and I was wondering what
workstations
>> and operating systems would you recommend. Ideally it should be
compatible
>> with our current systems , i.e allowing remote log-in and file
sharing
>> between our current and the new workstation. Therefore I assume that
I
>> should use either Solaris or Linux as our operating system. However,
would a
>> PC be more powerful (for the same money) as a Sun? If so what systems
would
>> people recommend (at around the #5000 mark for instance) and would we
be
>> better with Solaris or Linux?
>
> If you look at bare computing power an Athlon based PC system under
Linux
> gives you more of it than any SUN/HP/SGI/whatever workstation. Also,
it
> should be no problem to integrate Linux into an NIS/NIS+ environment
for
> sharing user logins, home directories etc. However, it can be much
more
> effort to maintain two different hardware/software platforms
(installing
> software for both platforms, dealing with byte-order problems when
> exchanging data between PC and SUN, and other things).
>
> Yours
>
> --
> Volkmar Glauche
>
> Department of Neurology         E-Mail  [log in to unmask]
> UKE Hamburg                     WWW     http://glauche.home.pages.de/
> Martinistr. 52                  Phone   49(0)40-42803-5781
> 20246 Hamburg                   Fax     49(0)40-42803-9955
>