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Xgrid Clustering Software and Demo
no_demons writes "Along with a selection of other goodies, Apple also unveiled their Xgrid clustering technology from their advanced computation group today. Xgrid can turn a number of networked Macs into a supercomputer, detects nodes automagically via Rendezvous, and can run in or out of a screensaver mode. You can download a technology demo (including a BLAST test app) here."
Nope, it won't work on those. XGrid is based off of Apple's Rendezvous, which is OS X ( well, at least until someone ports it, seeing as it is open source. So, unless you plan to port it yourself, and to port XGrid as well ( if it is ever open sourced ), then you're out of luck. If this was a serious post that is. If it was a troll, then I bit, but you don't care ;)
And so we go, on with our lives
We know the truth, but prefer lies
Lies are simple, simple is bliss
OSX requires:
- PCI
- Open Firmware
- a PPC 603 or 604 or later
- oodles of RAM (64 minimum).
Running it on a legacy Mac - that is, anything older than a Power Mac 9500 - would involve somehow getting around these. You'd have to:
- write an Open Firmware bios for the machine and trick it into booting via it
- write drivers for the machine's onboard video so that it LOOKS to the OS like a PCI card behind a bridge chip (repeat for sound, network, etc)
- get a 603 or later (OS X 10.2 needs a G3 or later), some of the upgrades for 68K machines could only go to a 601
- provide for 64 or 128MB RAM on a machine whose motherboard is limited to 36. Oh, and endure the sluggishness of 72-pin RAM.
OS X is not OS 9 and it is not Red Hat.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
It isn't inherently limited to Macs... however, the only computers that they have written the client for is Mac 10.2.8 or better.
(From the FAQ)
Q: Can I use Xgrid with other UNIX-based computers?
A: The short answer is no.
The long answer is that Xgrid uses an XML property list protocol built on top of BEEP for all of its inter-computer communication and coordination, and because these protocols are open, it is possible a client, agent, or controller could be written to run on other UNIX-based computers and interoperate with Xgrid. However, no such programs have been written.
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research." - Einstein
I want to sell my processor time to a broker who will resell it on a day to day basis to whoever is the highest bidder.
Several companies tried this back in 2001 and discovered that the processor time on your computer is worth less than the overhead cost of using it. Sorry.
Read ClusterWorld and you can figure this out yourself.
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
It's running on my home network of 2 desktop G4s and one PowerBook G4. Looks and works great.
--
d a v e
d a v e
"Hmmm...upgrades."
What's more important is what it's clustering, 90 nanometer G5s. Apple and IBM are the first company to bring 90 nm processors to the market. Xserve White Paper
Clustering databases has different issues/concerns than clustering computational problems. I wrote an article about database clustering a while back, available here, if you're interested.
Breakfast served all day!
AltiVec-based factoring program. Created as extension of original factor.c project at Next Software, Inc.
Not originally PPC specific...
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
Actually, a G5 starts out at $1799. You are thinking of the Cluster Server XServe, at $2999. If you actually were to do even a little bit of research you will start to notice that in order to match the performance of these machines you will have to spend a lot more than the $1000 you quoted.
Remember you have to have:
Gigabit Ethernet (the XServe has 2 ports built in).. I think this will probably account for $300-$500 of that thousand right there
SATA
Very high performance memory systems (with ECC on the XServe)
FireWire800 (drives and networking)
PCI-X (can you say Infiniband?)
And if we are focusing on the XServe:
Hardware fault notification (very well implemented)
1U rack space (slide out drawer, including cable management)
MacOS X Server (so nice to admin)
I don't think you know what you are talking about. After all, Virginia Tech just hit #3 on the supercomputing list with a cluster of G5's, and everyone is talking about how cheap they did it. The guy behind the project did a lot of research and discovered that this was the best price, Dell didn't even come close (they gave them 3 tries to do so).
"XGrid is based off of Apple's Rendezvous, which is OS X "
No, Xgrid is based off of the Zilla project that ran on NeXT.
Zilla was acquired by Apple when NeXT was purchased.
Zilla was rechristened Xilla during development in honor of OS X.
It's now called XGrid.. and yes it is cool.
Now, XGrid includes support for Rendzvous.
Rendzvous is Apple's release of ZeroConf, an OPEN SOURCE ad hoc IP based protocol.
Someone else asked about running on other BSD's.
XGrid runs in user space. It isn't a kext (kernel extension). It probably could run on other BSDs without too much work, but it is a carbon app so you'd have to totally port the interface to some other GUI API.. and you'd have to port it from Obj C to something more common I'd guess.
Apple hasn't provided source (yet) though so I don't see anyone porting it soon. Maybe reverse engineering it...
other stuff... it apparently makes use of XML too but I haven't gone through all the docs yet.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
XGrid does NOT need to run on Xserves. People seem to be drawing that conclusion from somewhere. You can use it on any machines capable of running OS X (10.2 though, I believe). The reason it gets quite interesting is because the average person can set up something somewhat powerful with the desktops laying around their house. I for one, have 5 Mac machines in my house that have lots of idle time. I could install XGrid and use that idle time efficiently to perform distributed tasks. (of course, I would have to figure out what to do first)