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Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Penguin Computers
Pii writes "News.com is running a story about Penguin Computing acquiring Scyld Computing, a company founded by Donald Becker, of linux ethernet driver and Beowulf cluster fame. Becker will stay on as Penguin's Chief Technology Officer, and the companies claim they don't expect any layoffs as a result of the merger."
The topic alone makes the next 100 posts redundant..
Prehaps now they'll have enough time to get the DEC Tulip driver working 100%
...the 2 workers at each company were relieved to here today that their jobs were no in jeopardy.
Just curious (in a serious way), is anybody actually using a beowolf cluster for anything important? Anything that couldn't be done with a super-powerful single machine?
--D
I posted newbieshly to a Debian NG and amidst the flames and RTFM's, Donald Becker actually took the time to provide me with the solution.
This experience encouraged me to continue learning Linux networking, and the rest is (obscure) history.... :-)
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
A Beowulf cluster of resurgent troll jokes.
A Beowulf Cluster of Beowulf Clustering Companies ... shenanigans.
imagine a beowulf cluster of beowulf clusters
Here's one at my workplace...
What takes hours on this system could take weeks on a "super-powerful single machine".
BlackNova Traders
Imagine a Penguin cluster of a Beowulf Penguin cluster of clusters of Penguins and Beowulfs surrounded by clusters of Beowins and Pengowulfs which are then clustered together into a nice, neat, little cluster.
Betcha can't imagine that. So there!
How do you rate the article as troll?
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
Have you ever heard clusters mentioned in literature prior to 1960? No? That's because liberal scientists invented the concept of Beowulf Clusters to push their hippie Communist principles through false benchmark numbers telling us the pervasive lie that sharing resources evenly is the most efficient method. Don't buy it.
the two companies don't expect to lay off any staff, a representative said
... The key word here is "expect". My former company's management didn't expect layoffs either, but funnily enough they did 6 rounds before sinking completely.
Right, so they'll have 2 PR divisions, 2 marketing divisions,
This said, Donald Becker is cool, Penguin Computing is cool (I toyed with an alpha box from them for a while and I was very inpressed), so I reckon the result should be uber-cool.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Other headlines to show up soon:
All the computers that could be extracted from the Beowulf clusters this new company will have!
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
My company built a head-to-head multiplayer trivia game using Penguin computers, they worked great and I'd recommend them for people doing web-based multiplayer.
those guys are great, and congrats to them. I have fond memories of walking down to their office on Mission St, and carrying one of their new 2U boxes down to where I worked. When we opened the box, not only did we find a machine that is still running right now (over 2 years) but a couple of cool tshirts.
From the "Related links" Slashbox to the right of the article: Beowulf cluster. Go educate thyself.
And your mom said to tell you to watch what you say, potty mouth. Heh.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
and this...
Beowulf is an approach to building a supercomputer as a cluster of commodity off-the-shelf personal computers, interconnected with a local area network technology like Ethernet, and running programs written for parallel processing.
microsoft sells them, have a look at their product information page. Hight Availability Clustering
I think it might be available for linux too.
--
http://www.shorl.com/hasafrofrinobe
Hey!!!
Thats mine line.
I will now sue you under the DMCA for copyright infringement and circumventing my right to say my line!
Ever heard of google? Seek and ye shall find.
Everyone knows that you can't keep a Beowulf cluster of penguins up for too long; the nodes will all go down as soon as a plane flies over them and trash your uptime.
Whoops.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
We have 2 that we use for simulations in the Physics department. Well, i say 2...the 2nd one hasn't actually been assembled yet.
The reason we use the beowulfs is because the problems are such that they're easy to break up into chunks. Consider the "system" (in our case) to be a cube with stuff inside that we want to process. We can break the cube up into smaller cubes and process those chunks, and then reassemble (must like is done with folding@home, seti@home, and the like).
The difference? Well, instead of a program taking a day to run, it will take a few hours. Instead of taking a week, it may take a day.
Sometimes a problem doesn't require a Beowulf. If you require several simulations, and the total CPU time amounts to 1 month...then you'd do just as well running the simulations on nodes and just waiting a month. If you REALLY want to know what's happening with a certain set of conditions, it's often times very useful to use the cluster to find out in a matter of hours.
Mike.
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
I've got about 9 plushie penguins sitting on my desk (hint, that's how many Altus's we have running our nasty compute jobs)
I am QUITE CERTAIN this merger will mean even more gnarly Penguin configurations!
Sun better watch the hell out. (go ahead fanboys, flame away)
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
PORTMAN
GRITS
PROPS TO MAUS.
Ahh... cheap shit Tulip cards and RealTek 8139s... now those are the kinds of quality hardware you can depend on! And you wonder why you have networking problems.
Becker has spent a LOT of his time adding Linux support for poorly documented, mis-configured, total crap hardware - and you cheap assholes complain. You should read the kernel newsgroup archives - some developers suggested a few years back that they dump RTL81XX entirely because the firmware sucked so bad. You whiners should be thanking Scyld for their work.
Or maybe buy a decent NIC instead.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
SeCX YOU!
NO SIG
The cluster *beowulfs* you.
Not really sure how it's supposed to do that, but still.
Thanks... but I was looking particularly for a "BEOWULF" cluster of "NUDE" portmans... any linkage?
Hey! Imagine a CLIC cluster of those!
I dont understand your post, what do Mac users have to do with Star Trek?
There is no god
As I think more about it, it's very strange to me that this story was posted on Tuesday. As in troll Tuesday.
What if there's a grand conspiracy involving Slashdot, the trolls, and a higher level of consciousness related to both?! What if the war between them is simply a stage on which to act out and therefore express the human tendency to resist authority, and, as such, to sanction it?!
Oh, the horror! The agonizing, cold truth!
...
Ok, which door was it again?
Business Description
Penguin Computing was founded in 1998 with one goal: to create servers that were as reliable as anything from Sun, IBM or SGI. But instead of running mainframe level hardware with proprietary Unix, they ran on x86 architecture with a dynamic new open source operating system - Linux. The company operates in Mountain View, CA, in a room rented from an ISP.
So, who exatly was saved from being layed off?
This guy beats Nixon as a pathological liar
Thanks for nothing,
W00t
Why didn't Donald Becker bring Walter Fagen into the company?
BTW: First Steely Dan post.
...becoming a patent millionaire
pfffft. I've got 2 clusters of those. Dave
Do not wory, Taco wil re-submit the story.
The Linux IDE guy, also rules. ATA66, ATA100, SATA, thank you Andre! He helped me sort out a caching IDE controller once via private email.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Duuuuuude ! That Beowulf dude was like totally hardcore, dude! He ripped off that monster's arm and beat him to death with it!
Now I'll sue YOU under the DMCA
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
well this is great news. i work for a visual fx company and we pretty much use Penguin gear for our render farms and IT infrastructure. These guys have great gear and great prices...so this sounds great.
I thought Scyld was based in Anapolis Md. will they be moving out to Cali?
God is real, unless declared integer.
I've got 3
All made entirely out of hot grits
All installed by Natalie Portman, who I stripped and petrified afterwards.
Oh ya, they're all in here, too.
Image a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf clusters!!
Is that even possible by definition?
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
its actually a southpark reference
bite my glorious golden ass.
And this is our supercomputing center.... also known as "the flock?"
I wonder what they'd call something like this. What do you call a linked group of processing computers? Maybe it depends on purpose - like "the armada" for military Beowulfs, or perhaps the "inquisition" for the RIAA
It's cool that Donald got this deal, a lot of linux users owe him a great deal.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
(pretty visual, but funny anyway)
A guy wants to have sex for money, but hes has only got $10.
He asks a first whore, but she says she doesn't dump prices.
He asks another one, but she says the lowest she gives is blowjobs and those cost $20
This continues until he finds one who tells him "For $10, I will do the Penguin to you".
The guy agrees and she lowers his pants, only to run away with the $10.
The guy grabs his pants and limps after the girl, shouting "My money !" (this is the visual part)
You know what pisses me off? Just try going to a store and LOOKING for an ethernet card that ISN'T Realtek. Everywhere I go I find all this Realtek based garbage--a real, honest to god 3Com or Intel card is now a special order! No one stocks them anymore, just Realtek junk (or Netgear cards, which are also realtek).
From http://www.googlism.com/index.htm?ism=beowulf+clus ter&type=2 :
;)
beowulf cluster is offline
beowulf cluster is such a high performance computing environment
beowulf cluster is the only machine in the cluster that you can login to
beowulf cluster is extremely powerful
beowulf cluster is a bit extreme
beowulf cluster is an investment
beowulf cluster is available for $1195 per person
beowulf cluster is a computer system conforming to the beowulf architecture
beowulf cluster is to first connect to the university unix service via the common desktop environment
beowulf cluster is now operational
beowulf cluster is shown below
beowulf cluster is via httpd running on your server node
beowulf cluster is a little off the beaten path
beowulf cluster is linux
beowulf cluster is connected with 100
beowulf cluster is reported
beowulf cluster is the number of people waiting in line to run their code on the system
beowulf cluster is 42nd on the list
beowulf cluster is small
You can tell an American thought of this page, can't you
I could at first, but then the acid wore off. Let's call it a draw, OK?
Imagine a single processor, isolated from the cluster, working all by itself!
We have moved to different offices in Annapolis about a mile away from our original location. The view isn't as nice, but the new office space has a machine room that is about three times the size of the small office that we previously used.
I've got 3
All made entirely out of hot grits
All installed by Natalie Portman, who I stripped and petrified afterwards.
All in Soviet Russia...
It's very difficult to make money on software in the Beowulf arena because, duh, it's FREE! You have to make your money on hardware and integration of the hardware and software. Seems that there'll be lots of overhead with all of the developers now on hand at Penguin. Maybe this is why the CEO of Penguin, Marty Sayer, left 2 years ago and is now a VP at AMD.
In addition, for the most part Clustermatic does the same thing and is setup the exact same as a Scyld distribution, granted Scyld does add some neat things of their own. Although Scyld actually has turned a profit here of late, don't get me wrong, I like Becker but I really don't see this one working out in the long run.
Look dude. You obviously don't work in technology. Who the fuck has time to use Gentoo at work??? I sure don't. I spend too much time dicking with Citrix servers!! Redhat does everything I need it to do quite well and I can build a firewall in 2 hours instead of it taking a whole day.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
That's quite a clever signature, jinxie. The irony is not wasted.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
that need to pay $C0
cluster is glad it's not in YOU!
There is no spoon.
Spooooooooooon!