Wanted: Turn-Key 10-Node Beowulf Cluster

forgotten password writes: "I'd just started working on my morning M&Ms, when I was asked where my group can buy a good turn-key ~2CPUx10-node Beowulf cluster in two hours. I suspect the time frame is longer than that, although the window-of-opportunity for the money is apparently on the order of days, and a quote before the procurement meeting would help. Any ideas? Who's good? What it should cost? Thanks!" If you're quick, maybe you can become the world's newest manufacturer of custom beowulf clusters.

Comments

Atipa

[p14-lda]

Clemson University purchased a setup w/ 512 nodes from Atipa, they delivered it onsite. Can't beat that. Call 888-222-7822, and ask for Bret, tell him the PARL sent you

Re:Atipa

[Dyelar]

Be warned, Atipa was recently bought by MicroTech computers, and they are sometimes known for not being very good about support, or providing decent equipment. I know that Microtech fired a whole bunch of the Atipa employees though. Before this though, Atipa was looking very good.

If you are interested, SGI can sell you turn key beowulf solutions also. You can also go to http://www.beowulf.org and they have a list of commercial companies that provide beowulf clustering solutions.

Western Scientific ...

[Bob(TM)]

... will sell you one.

Price depends on bells and whistles, but the 8 node, dual processor P-III system we got with SCI cards ran around $35K.

http://www.wsm.com

Beowulf Site (www.beowulf-underground.org)

[p14-lda]

Check out www.beowulf-underground.org That is the place for everything beowulf. It is run by the guys in the Parallel Architecture Research Lab at Clemson University.

From Linux Journal

[kperrier]

A quick search of the ads in my linux journal:

• http://www.microway.com/
• http://www.aspsys.com/
• http://www.swt.com/

I hope this helps!

Kent

Vendors

[PenguinX]

Penguin Computing ships beowulf clusters

IBMdoes a lot of linux stuff, they even have beowulf traning classes - I imagine that they have some turnkey solution.

Compaq sells 'em. too.

In other words, almost any company that sells Linux servers sells beowulf clusters o' servers as well. And if you want training, quite a few of them out there have classes for it too :)

OUCH

[Tensor]

1. Microway's Dual 1GHz Pentium III Beowulf Cluster
Package Pricing (Including Server):
8 Processors: $ 8,625
16 Processors: $16,325
32 Processors: $31,725
64 Processors: $62,525

dammm this is like a 1k per proc ! i am sure you can build it cheaper

Don't forget Scyld.

[pi_rules]

Check out Scyld [scyld.com]. If I'm not mistaken Donald Becker (one of the founders of Beowulf) is the head of the company ... or at least has something to do with it.

We've bought from two places

[BrentN]

We bought a 168-node Pentium cluster from Atipa, and we're negotiating for a 1024-node (yes, that's right) Athlon cluster from Linux Networx.

Re:x4? xMore?

[choprboy]

As someone who actually owns a quad Xeon (Intel Sitka 4x400MHz 1M cache) and is building 2 more for a cluster... the answer, as always, is "depends". It all depends on what the intended use is. For a embarrassingly simple parallel processing job (aka running 20 seti@home jobs) the price/performance ratio can be quite poor. Prices are definately down, but the motherboards and RAM are still fairly expensive (typically you need EDO ECC DIMMs with high end server boards, not the cheap SDRAM). You can pick up several 1GHz barebones Athlons for the same price and run the data serially thru each at a faster pace.

On the other hand, if you have a true multi-threaded, highly integrated task that requires high inter-process communication, separate boxes are a poor choice. Something like a large relational database or multi-dimensional vibration calculation wherein each calculation requires knowledge of it's neighbors motions, is far superior on a multi-CPU box. Unless you implement an expensive Dolphin/Myrinet network, the process communication alone, be it over ether, SCSI, or FC, kills a multi-box solution. Not to mention the fact quad Xeon boxes typically take 4-8GB of RAM so everything is always local.