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Wanted: Turn-Key 10-Node Beowulf Cluster

Posted by timothy on from the only-alive-not-dead dept.

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.

3 of 239 comments (clear)

  1. Just wondering... by teaserX · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Would 2 Quad boxes be better than 4 duals? I don't think they're *much* more expensive (per slot)and administering two boxes might be more practical than four. The performance gained by eliminating communications overhead may make for a desirable price/performance. I don't know; I was just thinkin'...

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  2. RTS+FPS Sim by Da+VinMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not encryption... modeling of the ground actions to be take in Afghanistan or other areas. Probably need to know just how hard it's going to be. Couple the micro-management concerns of a first person shooter with the strategic elements of a real-time strategy with the parallel concerns of mutiple agents in the field and you could probably simulate a proper battlefield in short order.

    Hmm...

    My $0.02 worth of a guess. :)

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  3. Re:Cheaper solution by milkmandan9 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Forget the eMachines.

    I've just finished building a (really small) 4-node cluster for some research I'm doing.

    Each node is a Duron 750 w/256MB RAM and a 100Base net card, power supply and floppy drive. They're vertically stacked on some 2' threaded rod from McMaster Carr.

    But get this: I built the whole thing for $170 per node . That's everything, shipped to my door.

    They load the kernel off the floppy and grab the NFS root from a fileserver I've got set up, so no need for hard drives. Granted, there's a bit more network and memory overhead (both /var and /tmp sit in memory), but I can buy more nodes from the money that I've saved on hard drives.