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

Re:What do you run on the darn thing ?

[cr0sh]

Most of the apps for Beowulf clusters tend to be scientifically oriented apps. It really comes down to there being only certain kinds of problems that can be broken down into parallel processes that can be executed concurently, then the answers "recombined" at the end to get the result.

IIRC, Mosix allows for using the machine as one large machine, essentially allowing each process (or groups of processes) a single CPU, but funneling the result back to the main controller, so to the user, it looks like one large machine. This is different from a standard parallel processing Beowulf cluster, which behave like classical parallel processing machines.

For that domain (parallel processing), aside from coding your own stuff (hard to due, even if you are a master coder, from what I understand - due to having to understand what classes of problems can be broken down into parallel tasks, and then actually applying that knowledge to real tasks), there is one application that would prove to be "fun" - Ray Tracing.

Fortunately, POVRay has a paralleled version available, for Beowulf clusters. I don't have a link, but I know it exists (heck, you can probably get it at the POVRay site).

One other disclaimer: Everything I have said should be interpreted as "coming out my ass", simply because I have no experience at building or using Beowulf clusters or any other parallel processing architectures. Most of what I know about them have come from /. discussions, various web sites of Beowulf cluster projects, books, and magazine articles (as well as one funky book I picked up at the library detailing programming in Fortran for a Connection Machine - eeepp!). The POVRay stuff is true, though...