In order to test the efficiency of dual nodes we can employ tests from the Beowulf Performance Suite (BPS) (http://www.plogic.com/bps). For the test hardware we used a node with an Intel SE7500WV2 motherboard. The test system includes dual 2.2Ghz Xeons, 1GB RAM, and a 2.4.20 SMP kernel. Both the Intel V6 (icc and ifc) compilers and the GNU V2.96 (gcc and g77) were used to compile the programs. Information about the test programs and the compile arguments can be found in the NAS suite in the BPS package.
A simple script has been written to run the tests and calculate the speedup for the NAS test suite (see below). The NAS test suite was compiled for one node using test size A. The script was run three times for and the results were averaged. The compiler can be changed by editing the ``run_suite'' line in the script.
We also ran the stream-wall program from the BPS package.