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multithreadingvirtual-machinechapelparallelism-amdahl

Will we see an expected speedup in Chapel if running "inside" VMs?

I'm teaching with Chapel next semester and we are considering using a VM for students to program on instead of a physical machine. As part of class, I want students to be able to see speedup when using multiple threads. I fear that they won't be able to see this as the VM will act with implicit hyperthreading; one thread will run just as fast as many threads.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Is there any chance I can use a VM instead of a physical device?

Solution

  • We had success with a Virtual Machine! The VM we used for the whole class has:

    • 16 CPUs
    • a 60 GB hard disk
    • 4 GB RAM
    • 3 ESXI hosts

    The system also has umlimited IOPs. (Input/Outputs per second.)

    I recommend this solution to other teachers.