MandrakeClustering Shows Off At ISC2003

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."

Comments

We make jokes about Quake

[ObviousGuy]

But what are people doing with these things in the wild? Is everyone running rendering farms?

Do file/mail servers really need this kind of horsepower (assuming you aren't Google or Yahoo, of course)?

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[bm_luethke]

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).

Re:We make jokes about Quake

[InodoroPereyra]

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 ...

One Question...

[INMCM]

Is it as fast as the new Macs?

So, is *THIS* where my MD subscription dollars go?

[RLiegh]

If so, then I think it's a pretty good investment. :)

So much for the "bailing out a failing business, let the market sort it out" mindset. If Mandrake hadn't appealed to the public, they would not have had the $ to come up with this. :)

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[qorkfiend]

Unless I read the article wrong, these clusters will not be operating on the same level as Windows and OSX. This is designed for research and heavy-duty number crunching, something that XP and OSX aren't. I agree, talented programmers are spending too much time on worthless projects, but this isn't one of them.

My bad

[mikeophile]

It can be downloaded here

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

Mandrake + French =

[Geminus]

An OS that surrenders under pressure?

Re:Mandrake + French =

[phoxix]

This has nothing to do with French people. I am plenty sure that there are many people from around the world that have worked on linux, *AND* that you probably disagree with outright.

But none of that matters. What matters is that while our people disagree, and our governments fight, we still can come together on something at least. And in our geeky world, that something is free software.

Sunny Dubey

PS: The right to disagree is rather powerful, sadly people don not see that when they do disagree with each other.

yes

[SHEENmaster]

because we all know that render times kick ass when processors have a 12mb/s wifi link between them. What were multi-processor manufacturers thinking building the processors into one unit when beowulfing is available!

(Beowulf clusters have long-term power but slow reaction times. Firewire networking (maybe scsi?) would help with this, but the node->node bandwidth is still an issue.)

Why would Mandrake use Intel's compiler for the Opteron?

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[Farley Mullet]

This is designed for research and heavy-duty number crunching, something that XP and OSX aren't.

It looks like I'm the Apple troll today, so I have to point out that there is a specially designed Xserve U1 rackmount for clustering apps. I think that part of this has to do with the fact that Apple is still used disproportionately often in academia, and part of it has to do with the Apple-Pixar connection. But it turns out that OS X (the server edition, anyway) is a clustering OS. See here for more details.

good - Mandrake needs some publicity

[molnarcs]

I've been using Mandrake for a while, and I would hate to see this company go - they have many great tools, and they put every single line of code they wrote under the gpl (unlike YAST for instance, even though I love SuSe too). They probably need as much PR as they can get, and this was a good idea.

Its time for some features, like their excellent urpm* tools to get more attention (I wonder why it received such scare coverage, for it is the only package management tool that is on par with apt-get among rpm-based distributions - maybe with the exception of apt-rpm). Another great tool, excellent in large deployments is draksync.

Check out these sites:
urpmi mini-howto and easy-urpmi

Cluster File System

[codepunk]

It ain't a cluster until it has a clustered file system. Until it has that it is nothing more than another high availability solution.

Re:Cluster File System

[GigsVT]

I guess you might want to tell that to all the people that do high performance clustering with nothing more than ssh.

Enough about Quake

[SleezyG]

Here it comes... I'm going to vent. How is that ./ readers (clearly amongst the most well-educated of the 'net surfing masses) always fall for the bigger == better claim? First of all, Quake, or any computer game that I can think of, does not have multi-node support. You have to rewrite the code to support the PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) message passing library, for example.

And it's not just with clusters we seem to have this problem. Let's look at Apple computers and the G5. A 64-bit machine will simply allow you to add/subtract/multiply/etc really big integers faster. How often do think you use numbers that large? Encrypting or decrypting emails is the only thing that comes to mind for even an "above average" user. Unless you run software that supports multiple processors such as web and database servers or want to watch a DVD while you play Quake, a multiprocessor machine is not for you. The relative performance increases are negligible. It's simply a marketing ploy that allows Apple to make a high profit on the low volume of units they ship. They throw an additional $300 uP in their computers and charge an extra $1000!

But in Apple's defense, their displays rock. Any luck getting one of those running on a PC? I'm done ranting. Have a nice day.