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).

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.

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.

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.