threading question (more results)

Hello,

(for all who are interested)

I finally obtained access to a linux platform running 2.2.17 on a 2x500
Mhz alpha machine (Compaq's testdrive program).

Below are my results:

Linux 2.2.17 on 2x500 Mhz Celerons: parallel app = 1.48 times faster than
sequential one.

Linux 2.4 on a 2x1 Ghz PIIIs: parallel ap = 1.57 times faster than the
sequential one.

Linux 2.2.17 on a 2 500 Mhz Alpha CPUs: parallel app = 1.76 times faster
than the sequential one.

Interesting how hardware changed the numbers. Another interesting thing is
that the same application when run on a dual Alpha running Tru64 does not
obtain the speedup Linux provided on the Alpha hardware.

In my limited example application SGI IRIX 2 CPU platform provided 2.25
times the speed of the sequential application and Sun Solaris 1.99 times
the sequential application (also on a 2 CPU machine). All these numbers
above are when the same code utilizing pthreads was compiled and run on
these various platforms.

On all of the tests I have used a pool of three threads waiting to get
work to do. The testing was done on a set of various sequence files that I
believe represent most of the types of data / sequences that might
be used on this program.

Best regards,
Ognen

-- 
Ognen Duzlevski
Plant Biotechnology Institute
National Research Council of Canada
Bioinformatics team