{"id":977,"date":"2005-12-12T06:50:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-12T01:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=977"},"modified":"2005-12-12T06:50:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-12T01:50:00","slug":"early-train-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/?p=977","title":{"rendered":"Early train"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, now I know<\/em> I’m getting old. I actually sorta like the early train. This is the 6:40 train, which is the last one with which I can basically guarantee a spot in the parking lot that’s both closer to the train and $2 rather than $3. It’s populated with hardcore commuters who are quiet and studious, and it’s not very full at all. Based only on the pleasantness of the train ride, I would go with the 6:40am inbound and the 6:50pm outbound. Of course, that’s crazy talk. <\/p>\n

The other crazy bit is that to catch this train, I had to set the alarm for 5:30. In yet another sign of my advancing adulthood, that’s not all that bad. I just planned my evening so that I went to bed around 10, and all was well. What have I become?<\/p>\n

Benchmark Weirdness<\/b><\/p>\n

I discovered a truly weird behavior on the benchmark system. If I configure it with “only” 4GB of RAM, it outperforms any of the higher memory configurations by a factor of 2.5. One would expect performance to either be consistent or to drop when you take most of the RAM out. Instead, it goes into super-turbo mode with less memory. All the RAM is exactly the same, and this is true no matter which slots \/ pairings I use. It’s totally repeatable, and it’s always the same performance ratio. There’s some sort of performance barrier above 4GB. Working with the performance engineers to figure out whether this is due to (a) a flaw in the system (unlikely) (b) some simple misconfiguration (most likely) (c) some serious flaw in my test scripts. I’m hoping for option “b”. “What, you don’t have ‘HIMEM_SUCK = 0FF’ set in the BIOS?” The first step is to give them system dumps in both the fast and slow configs. <\/p>\n

Since I have an appointment at MIT at 9am, I’m aiming to get to the datacenter at 8am, swap the memory, send the dumps, and boogie back to the orange line.<\/p>\n

Schedule insanity<\/b><\/p>\n

Here’s the plan for the next couple of weeks:<\/p>\n

Today: Datacenter, then onsite at MIT all day, teaching and hacking.
\nTomorrow evening: Fly to Florida
\nWed: Onsite at a big research shop in Florida, teaching and hacking
\nThu: Drive across FL to Bradenton, see my grandmother. Fly home in the evening.
\nFri: redmed<\/a>‘s work Christmas party
\nSat: Host a party at our place
\nTues: My company’s Christmas party.
\nWed evening: Fly to Chicago
\nThu: Onsite at a big research shop in Chicago, teaching and hacking
\nThu evening: Fly home.
\nFri morning: Drive to PA
\nMonday: Drive back to RI. Back to work.<\/p>\n

By the way, technolope<\/a> and capital_l<\/a>, sorry we couldn’t get together this weekend. redmed<\/a> and I are both way overcommitted and we sorta looked at each other and said (nearly in unision) “I feel really bad, but the idea of adding more socializing totally stressed me out”. We’ll make it up to you in Jan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, now I know I’m getting old. I actually sorta like the early train. This is the 6:40 train, which is the last one with which I can basically guarantee a spot in the parking lot that’s both closer to the train and $2 rather than $3. It’s populated with hardcore commuters who are quiet . . . → Read More: Early train<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chris.dwan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}