What's Special about Multi-core Processors and Clusters?

QualNet supports state-of-the-art multi-core processors and clusters. In order to take advantage of multi-processor computing environments, software applications must execute by means of multiple threads. Today, few software applications are multithreaded, but QualNet is. QualNet Developer by default supports dual-core processors, and customers can upgrade to support any multiple of 4 processors.

Multi-core: Coming Soon to a Computer Near You

In a recent report†, Intel revealed that 70% of the new desktop machines it sold in 2006 had dual-core processors. What's more, Intel predicts that 90% of the performance desktops they sell will be multi-core in 2007. Servers are even more multi-core enabled. 85% of the servers Intel sold in 2006 were multi-core, and 100% are expected to be multi-core in 2007.

† Multi-Core Capability, Intel Software Network, July 2005.

QualNet Performance on Multi-core Processors

What do dual-core, quad-core, and multi-core processors buy you in terms of execution speed with QualNet? Check out the graph below, which shows how QualNet 4.0 performed on three different multi-core platforms. All dual- and multi-core trials ran faster than real-time.

The simulation was an 802.11b wireless scenario running 700 nodes with terrain-based propagation, random mobility at 30m/s, and AODV routing. The simulation time was 900 s. Traffic through the network consisted of 625 CBR sessions sending 512-byte packets at 1-second intervals. There was no parallel optimization by means of processor partitioning, and with some optimization, additional speedup could be realized.

QualNet on Distributed Architectures

QualNet executes on shared memory architectures like those described above, and also on distributed architectures such as clusters. Read more on QualNet's parallel capabilities.