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Domain: blacklablinux.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to blacklablinux.com.

Comments · 11

  1. Re:Yeller Dawg iMacs by commodoresloat · · Score: 1, Offtopic · on Yellow Dog Linux 2.3 Released
    Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!

    That would be Black Lab Linux.

  2. Re:Where is my iRack(tm)? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Apple Introduces Xserve Rackmount Servers
    You're not the target market for these servers. The target market is education, science (biotech), and creative professionals (video, audio, etc). They want these. Desperately.

    True, if your application is optimized for the AltiVec, you want multiple G4s. So why would you not buy one of these?

    Here's the good news (for Apple, at least): Apple's new toy is smaller and cheaper than Terrasoft's. If you get the Terrasoft without the OSX, that price might change for the better. Here's the bad news: Apple seems to have the same sort of headlock on G4 pcs that Microsoft has on Windows. You just can't get an affordable PowerPC without doing it on Apple's terms.

  3. No, 11.8 really. by hotsauce · · Score: 1 · on SGI Installs First Itanium Cluster At OSC

    And this is different from SGI or Intel maketing data how?

    Actually, better G4 benchmarks are at Black Lab Linux.

  4. Re:Yawn! by RevAaron · · Score: 2 · on Sun's Zippy New Chips
    Close enough? Extra points for being in the same easy-to-use spirit as Apple's products themselves: Project AppleSeed.

    Runner up goes to Black Lab Linux.

  5. So much for my "cube farm" idea by PowerMacDaddy · · Score: 1 · on Apple Dumps the Cube
    As soon as the Cube came out, the first thing that popped in my head was, "Doh! This'd be great for a server farm!" Think of it: you ditch the fancy enclosure and design a rackmount with openings for Cube modules and forced airflow. (Screw the convection cooling.) Each module would plug into a gigabit and FireWire backplane hooked to a massive RAID, and each Cube would be running a tweaked version of Black Lab Linux to take advantage of the whole clustering & parallell computing support that it offers. So say a Cube dies (hard drive failure, or whatever). You pop it out, you pop in a spare replacement, and the whole system keeps on chugging. This'd be ideal for: render farms; web server farms; massively paralell supercomputer solutions; whatever.

    But think: with the Cube being discontinued, wait 6 months and head to eBay where you'll be able to pick them up for dirt cheap.
    ---

  6. Re:Overclockers Paradise (Mac Cluster) by travis77 · · Score: 1 · on Macs In Space II

    Bla ck Lab Linux

    I grew up on the Mac and UNIX

    Travis

  7. Blacklab Linux by Lagos · · Score: 1 · on What's The Best Linux Distribution For Clustering?
    Personally, I prefer Blacklab Linux as a professional solution, although unfortunately it is not free. Still, the expensive price of Apple PowerPC's makes this a viable solution only under a few conditions:
    1. You need to do mega number crunching: Nothing can really beat an AltiVec PPC processor with compiled Fortran.
    2. For some reason, the amount of wattage your cluster uses is important to you.

    I can't really think of any others, unless you're a crazy mac user. But don't listen to me; I'm just a crazy mac user.

    --
    Lagos
  8. Linux Support by pridkett · · Score: 3 · on Rumors Of MP PowerMac G4 Flying!

    For those of you who are asking the inevitable question, "What about linux support"? I think you should have some faith in the good people of the world out there. You might want to see some of the stuff that TerraSoft Solutions is doing with YellowDog Linux and BlackLab Linux. I'm not sure how much a lot of this applies, but they've gotten it to run on some of CSP's Quad G4 boards and other nifty configurations.

  9. Raw number crunching on distributed.net by sethgecko · · Score: 2 · on Which Processor Is Best For Real-Time Computations?
    Depends on what you're crunching, but a 450MHz PPC G4 does 4 Megakeys/second on distributed.net. If you're wondering, my dual celeron 550 only does 3.08 MKeys/sec. Since the celeron uses the same P6 core as the P3, and the distributed.net client is heavily multi-threaded, this is one of the few cases where 2 processors should be faster than one much faster one. In other words, in this, and only this case, 2 celerons have the number crunching power of a 1.1 Ghz P6 processor (read Pentium II/III). Or they have 75% the number crunching power of a 450MHz G4 using the altivec unit. If your number crunching can be done in vector operations and not floating point, the G4 rocks. Oh yeah, you can run linux on a G4 and use the altivec unit www.blacklablinux.com.

  10. Re:Thinking for difficult operations by sethgecko · · Score: 1 · on Which Processor Is Best For Real-Time Computations?

    Depends on what you're crunching, but a 450MHz PPC G4 does 4 Megakeys/second on distributed.net. If you're wondering, my dual celeron 550 only does 3.08 MKeys/sec. Since the celeron uses the same P6 core as the P3, and the distributed.net client is heavily multi-threaded, this is one of the few cases where 2 processors should be faster than one much faster one. In other words, in this, and only this case, 2 celerons have the number crunching power of a 1.1 Ghz P6 processor (read Pentium II/III). Or they have 75% the number crunching power of a 450MHz G4 using the altivec unit. If your number crunching can be done in vector operations and not floating point, the G4 rocks. Oh yeah, you can run linux on a G4 and use the altivec unit www.blacklablinux.com.

  11. Does energy use matter? by beachcomber · · Score: 1 · on 'Black Lab' Linux For G3 Clusters

    US energy has a relatively low cost of about $1/watt-year. Non-US energy costs are generally higher. For many energy efficiency is not a significant individual cost. Yet, consider the following...

    CASE 1. Embedded High Performance Computing.

    Sustainable PERFORMANCE/WATT can be a strong processor selection criteria for *embedded* processor selection including embedded high performance computing. Hence, vendors in the niche embedded high performance market tend to use PowerPC and DSP chips, not Alpha, Pentium or SPARC for dense compute solutions.

    Vendor examples: CSPI, Mercury, Sky

    Did folks notice that Black Lab Linux (see optional software) is working with MPI Software Technologies? Look close, MPI Software Technologies is actively supporting *embedded* MPI & MPI-RT.

    CASE 2. Not Too Large Clusters (50 or so processors)

    Also, notice the HPC Wire news article posted on the Top 500 site where...

    "Several problems were caused by the power consumption and the heat in that small laboratory. The Paderborn people needed the fire brigade to pump cold air into the room. The power consumption was about 10 - 12 KWatt. Switching on only the power supplies of the nodes, the electric fuses switched off."

    CASE 3. Blue Mountain...

    6,144 processors -- 10,000 KW always online; 2,600 KW average usage.

    SIXTEEN A/C Units plus FOUR 750-ton chillers plus TWO 10MW power stations (major UPS feature)

    CASE 4. Aggregate World Energy Consumption (Green perspective)

    Now consider 100,000,000 processors on desktops (far less than one per world capita)

    100,000,000 * 30 watts-year * US$1/watt-year = US$3 Billion each year (without consideration for cooling costs, higher average world energy prices, CPU fan MTBF costs & such)

    Hey, what's US$30 / year per CPU for a typical US home wallet??? Well maybe not much to many reading this... however, the energy costs can add up. Embedded system designers, large scale system installations, and environmentally sensitive people know what I'm talking about.

    -- Think Global, Act Local --