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MandrakeClustering Shows Off At ISC2003

Posted by timothy on from the snap-together-modules dept.

joestar writes "Just released today at ISC2003, Germany, is "MandrakeClustering", a high-performance computing Linux distribution/solution, which sounds interesting, at least in the PR: Pentium support with optimizations made with the Intel compiler, 64-bit Opteron support (with in this case, up to 16 GB of RAM for each cluster's node!), parallelized URPMI (Mandrake's apt-get) and other dedicated tools. This product is based on a one-year research project "CLIC" involving MandrakeSoft and partners. A good snapshot of the product running a 3D real-time demo is available here. The interesting point now: MandrakeClustering's goal is to provide a system which is easy to deploy, easy to administer and use. Well... Mum would certainly love to play Quake with this toy."

3 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. My bad by mikeophile · · Score: 3, Informative
    It can be downloaded here

    The $2,960 is to get support with it.

  2. Re:We make jokes about Quake by bm_luethke · · Score: 5, Informative

    Where I work (www.ornl.gov) we run weather models, nuclear stuff (explosions, fallout tracking, power plants, nuclear medical materials simulations), genome projects, particle flow analisys, a bunch of stuff (though unfortunatly for Mr. Dyslexic here no speel checker for slashdot :) ). Oil companies process seismic data to try and map what's underground, medical companies help develope medicines and gene therapy.

    Some of the projects (human genome most currently) may run for weeks over 10-20 terabytes of data. The algorithms used are pretty mundane - you just need to do them A LOT. Some of the particle flow stuff may model individual molecules in a furnace for example (not rendering the frames, but modelling the interactions and how to create a more effecient jet engine).

    --
    ------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
  3. Re:We make jokes about Quake by InodoroPereyra · · Score: 3, Informative
    But what are people doing with these things in the wild?

    Huh ? How got this modded as insightful ? Anyways, if you read the announcement, this is for high performance computing. It is a turn-key solution to easily set up, maintain and monitor a parallel cluster. Parallel clusters are essentially arrangements of computers that allow to process data at each computer at the same time ("in parallel"), and then collect the results and combine them, thus making possible to achieve supercomputing power out of inexpensive hardware.

    The announcement very clearly states which is the market niche they target (i.e. research labs and the like):

    "MandrakeClustering is not only a impressive example of innovative Linux technology, but it's also a complete "all-in-one" solution that includes support & assistance for "real-world" clustering deployments and critical research lab activities. We are extremely confident that this product will answer the needs of numerous technology research centers where time of deployment and ease of administration are highly valued", said FranÃois Bancilhon, MandrakeSoft CEO.

    By the way. It is so nice to see Mandrake aiming at corporate/government customers, this is going to be very healthy for the company. I would expect and encourage more of this ...