fastest lisp machine?

Discussion:

Mark Klein

2014-01-14 04:26:53 UTC

Id like to get the fastest lisp machine possible (within reason) for running the cl-http server as well as number-crunching-heavy simulations. Which hardware should I get? Are there are versions of common lisp that can take advantage of the multi-core multiprocessor architectures the new hardware (e.g. the new Apple desktop) is coming out with?

-------------------------------
Mark Klein
http://cci.mit.edu/klein

Principal Research Scientist
Center for Collective Intelligence
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Visiting Researcher
Dynamic and Distributed Information Systems Group
University of Zurich

Chun Tian (binghe)

2014-01-14 15:46:39 UTC

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Hi there,

I think Apple's latest PowerMac G5 (with two 64-bit PowerPC processors) is the fastest platform to run the free MCL 5.2 (or 6.0) with CL-HTTP inside it. But another obvious option should be the new black Mac Pro recently sold by Apple, plus commercial 64-bit LispWorks Enterprise for Mac, plus the last snapshot of CL-HTTP (if you can get it from one of its developer). As far as I know, MCL doesn't support multi-core, so your CL-HTTP application running on MCL can only make use of single PowerPC CPU, but LispWorks 6.x support SMP very well, and CL-HTTP running on it can use all CPU/cores in current system.

Hope this helps,

Chun Tian (binghe)

I’d like to get the fastest lisp machine possible (within reason) for running the cl-http server as well as number-crunching-heavy simulations. Which hardware should I get? Are there are versions of common lisp that can take advantage of the multi-core multiprocessor architectures the new hardware (e.g. the new Apple desktop) is coming out with?
-------------------------------
Mark Klein
http://cci.mit.edu/klein
Principal Research Scientist
Center for Collective Intelligence
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Visiting Researcher
Dynamic and Distributed Information Systems Group
University of Zurich
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info-mcl mailing list
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Espen Vestre

2014-01-14 16:04:00 UTC

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Hi, at work (Netfonds Bank in Norway) we use pretty vanilla server
hardware (mostly from Supermicro) with LispWorks, and we have dozens of
different server applications that all utilizes SMP. The fastest
processors for running our lisp software no doubt are Intel Core i7
versions (and the corresponding Xenon variants). The most SMP-heavy
daemon runs on an AMD though, simply because it's the machine with the
most cores. AFAIK SBCL is also an excellent choice for SMP.

--
(espen)

Andrew Shalit

2014-01-14 16:17:06 UTC

Permalink

Hi Mark -

I'll defer to others on the hardware. For taking advantage of multiple cores I'd recommend Clozure Common Lisp (formerly OpenMCL). It has native threads, which allows your software to run on multiple cores simultaneously.

Clozure CL is free and open source. You can get it at http://ccl.clozure.com.

Yours,

Andrew Shalit
Clozure Associates

Post by Mark Klein
Id like to get the fastest lisp machine possible (within reason) for running the cl-http server as well as number-crunching-heavy simulations. Which hardware should I get? Are there are versions of common lisp that can take advantage of the multi-core multiprocessor architectures the new hardware (e.g. the new Apple desktop) is coming out with?
-------------------------------
Mark Klein
http://cci.mit.edu/klein
Principal Research Scientist
Center for Collective Intelligence
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Visiting Researcher
Dynamic and Distributed Information Systems Group
University of Zurich
_______________________________________________
info-mcl mailing list
http://clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/info-mcl

Rainer Joswig

2014-01-14 21:06:59 UTC

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Hi,

CL-HTTP runs best in LispWorks. Generally the 64bit LispWorks is extremely fast (like twice compared to the 32bit version) and has excellent SMP support. Generally I think that LispWorks is the best CL implementation. Sorry, MCL users. ;-)

Note that you also need to tune the typical OS to accept enough concurrent connections, etc.

Note that one also might need to tune the GC settings of LispWorks for demanding production use a bit.
One drawback of all Lisp implementations (besides ABCL) is that they have no concurrent GC (one that runs concurrently to the other Lisp processes). Thus one might need to check the GC behavior under load.

The LispWorks port of CL-HTTP is also more capable and more optimized than the other variants.

There are other good choices for multi-core servers - I would usually recommend Clozure CL. I use CL-HTTP with Clozure CL on an ARM based quad-core computer. But the port of CL-HTTP to Clozure CL is a bit primitive: it lacks optimizations and capabilities. For a simple home server it can be enough, though. Clozure CL itself has SMP support, has a good GC, is widely ported and the developers know their job. Useless to say, I'm a fan of Clozure CL. ;-)
See: http://lispm.dyndns.org/ccl

If you look at the new Mac Pro, then something like LispWorks and CCL gives you support for the multi-core CPU. What they don't give you is direct support for computations on the GPUs (graphics cards). It might be useful/possible to run simulation code on the GPUs - not sure how you would best approach that from Lisp.

Regards,

Rainer Joswig

Pascal J. Bourguignon

2014-01-21 21:36:16 UTC

Permalink

That's a good question.

Otherwise, you could indeed benchmark the various current free
implementations (and a couple of commercial implementations that are
available for evaluation), on a range of different processors and see
which is the fastest.

On high-end x86_64, I'd bet for either Scieneer or SBCL.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scieneer_Common_Lisp

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__
http://www.informatimago.com/
"Le mercure monte ? C'est le moment d'acheter !"