Mini-ITX Clustering

Imagine.. by hookedup · 2004-02-26 06:59 · Score: 3, Funny

A beowulf cluster of these? There, done... and it felt good!

Re:Imagine.. by iminplaya · 2004-02-26 07:20 · Score: 4, Funny

Too Many Users

Evidently they didn't cluster enough...

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What?
Re:Imagine.. by Mr.+Bling+Bling · 2004-02-26 07:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

Yo what up?

Would it be possible to set up a clusta of these in a stretch Escalade? If so, how much would it cost and can I get some iced out (real diamonds, not no zircon encrusted shiat) 1U or smaller cases for the nodes in the clusta? Anybody willing to set something up for me. I gotst cash fo it.

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Re:Imagine.. by SEWilco · 2004-02-26 08:12 · Score: 4, Informative

I might be the originator of this phrase, so I would be qualified to point out that the proper phrasing requires the informative link:

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these.

The original links went to NASA/GSFC, but the Beowulf project central site has moved.
Re:Imagine.. by Cypherus · 2004-02-26 14:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

Screw Beowulf Clusters...Open Mosix Clusters are where it's at! http://openmosix.sourceforge.net

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Open Source. It's the difference between trust and antitrust.

Imagine... by Chmarr · 2004-02-26 07:00 · Score: 5, Funny

... a beowulf cluster of obligatory beowulf cluster comments.

Re:Imagine... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-26 07:10 · Score: 2, Funny

John Lennon surely would not have been happy!

Floating point performance by October_30th · 2004-02-26 07:01 · Score: 5, Interesting

I thought about this some time ago.

I decided against a mini-ITX cluster because the floating point performance (why else would you build a cluster?) of VIA CPUs is just abyssmal.

Is there any reason why there are no P4 or AMD mini-ITX mobos around?

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The owls are not what they seem

Re:Floating point performance by wed128 · 2004-02-26 07:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

i would imagine they run too hot for such a small form factor...this is just a guess, so treat it as such.
Re:Floating point performance by Short+Circuit · 2004-02-26 07:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

Not to mention that mini-ITX is VIA-proprietary technology. At least, I think it is.

And VIA markets their own line of CPUs for use in that scenario.

However, I wouldn't mind seeing Pentium-M or mobile Athlons placed on mini-ITX boards.

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tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
Re:Floating point performance by J3zmund · 2004-02-26 07:08 · Score: 5, Informative

They might be on their way. Here's a 1.7 GHz Pentium M.

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It's all Hood
Re:Floating point performance by 0x1337 · 2004-02-26 07:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

The reason why you don't see any Mini-ITX mobos around the Athlon, is power consumption. I recently built a mini-ATX computer around a T-Bird (1gHz, should have picked something less of an oven), and the mini-ATX power supply crapped out on me, making me buy a REAL ATX powersupply. Gah, still can;t find a 300 WAtt mini-ATX supply.

Btw, you're wrong - there ARE P4-based mini-ITX mobos.
Re:Floating point performance by -tji · 2004-02-26 07:12 · Score: 5, Informative

There are P4 Mini-ITX systems available: Pentium 4

But, most mini-itx systems are very small in size, and strive for quiet or silent operation. So, there are obvious problems with the P4's heat/power requirements. Perhaps a better solution is the Pentium-M in a mini-itx form factor. It has pretty good performance, at a low power/heat level: Pentium M. But, most of the Pentium-M boards are intended for industrial or OEM use, so they are hard to find in retail, and are pretty expensive.
Re:Floating point performance by niko9 · 2004-02-26 07:17 · Score: 4, Informative

How about Fujitsu's mini-tx form factor for the Pentium M proc. Runs passive (huge heatsink, but passive nonetheless) and uses less electrons.

Coudn;t find a link though, sorry.
Re:Floating point performance by October_30th · 2004-02-26 07:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

Sounds excellent.
In fact, a Pentium M platform would be a perfect choice as long as the mobile Athlon mobos are impossible to find.
Does anyone have a link?

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The owls are not what they seem
Re:Floating point performance by a20vertigo · 2004-02-26 07:25 · Score: 2, Informative

There are supposedly some Pentium M boards around, as well as 4s... in fact, if you look at Mini-ITX.com's store, they're selling a P4 mini-itx board. If only it's one slot was AGP and not PCI, that would make a hell of a small little gaming box...

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No matter where you go, there you are; even before you arrive.
Re:Floating point performance by mi · 2004-02-26 07:25 · Score: 5, Informative
the floating point performance (why else would you build a cluster?)
- To crack encryption?
- To compile big projects?
- To compress huge files?
The floating point is just a convenience. Almost any algorithm can be modified to work with fixed point precision -- and without loss of performance.
Of course, many people will insist, they need FP to be able count dollars and cents -- they don't even think of counting cents (or any other fractions of the dollar) with integers, for example.
These are, usually, the same people, who have troubles defining bit...
--
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Re:Floating point performance by a20vertigo · 2004-02-26 07:29 · Score: 2, Interesting

By Sandra's floating-point benchmark, the 1ghz VIA Ezra CPU couldn't match my old AMD K6/2-550... and that wasn't even that fast of a chip! Or that hot of one, either.

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No matter where you go, there you are; even before you arrive.
Re:Floating point performance by ducman · 2004-02-26 07:33 · Score: 2, Informative

Interesting timing on this. I was just looking at a mini-ITX mobo on tiger direct this morning. I'd been looking for SATA drives to add to my home storage server. But they had a mini-ITX board with 366 mhz Celeron and on-board IDE raid for about 50 bucks! That's less than most SATA controllers. So now I'm thinking I might buy, say 4 of those boards, put two, 250 Gb IDE drives on each, and have a fully mirrored terabyte cluster.

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"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
Re:Floating point performance by struan · 2004-02-26 07:35 · Score: 4, Informative

There are Pentium-M boards.

I'm not aware of any Athlon-based boards, but mostly because I'm satisfied with my Via-based M10000 board.
Re:Floating point performance by J3zmund · 2004-02-26 07:35 · Score: 4, Informative

Here is a Pentium M powered Mini-ITX board.

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It's all Hood
Re:Floating point performance by steveha · 2004-02-26 07:41 · Score: 5, Interesting

the floating point performance [...] of VIA CPUs is just abyssmal.

Older C3 cores run the FPU at half the clock rate. If you get the fanless 600 MHz EPIA motherboard, the FPU will be running at 300 MHz.

The newer, Nehemiah core C3 chips run the FPU at full clock speed. Any C3 newer than Nehemiah should run the FPU at full speed.

He used the VIA EPIA V8000A motherboard with an Eden core CPU. From what I found on google (here), the Eden core does run the FPU at full clock speed.

In any event, he said the cluster has more processing power than a four-P4 SMP system, while taking less electricity to run. And it will be quieter and more reliable. I'd like to see actual benchmarks, but it seems like it makes enough sense.

I read about a cluster of PocketPCs, and that didn't make practical sense. It was just a fun project.

steveha

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Re:Floating point performance by steveha · 2004-02-26 07:47 · Score: 2, Informative

he said the cluster has more processing power than a four-P4 SMP system

Whoops, I made a mistake. He actually said his 12-node VIA cluster has more power than "four 2.4 GHz pentium 4 mcahines used in parallel". Not SMP!

Sorry about the mistake.

steveha

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lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Re:Floating point performance by Mr.+McGibby · 2004-02-26 07:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

the floating point performance (why else would you build a cluster?)

* To crack encryption?
* To compile big projects?
* To compress huge files?

How about scientific computing? That's really the big thing that keeps cluster computing alive. Cracking encryption is the only thing on that list that makes sense. The other stuff shows your lack of knowledge of other disciplines by the fact that you think these are computationally expensive tasks.

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Re:Floating point performance by dabadab · 2004-02-26 08:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

There's one thing that makes VIA CPUs very interesting performance-wise: the xcrypt instruction. Using it the VIA CPUs just beat - and beat badly - anything else in certain task.

Check out Theo de Raadt's little benchmark:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=107 577297024182&w=2

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Real life is overrated.
Re:Floating point performance by ducman · 2004-02-26 08:04 · Score: 2, Informative

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTool s/item-details.asp?EdpNo=86698&Sku=MBM-TS20-C3 66

$49.95 with Celeron 366

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"We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
Re:Floating point performance by mangu · 2004-02-26 08:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

The floating point is just a convenience. Almost any algorithm can be modified to work with fixed point precision -- and without loss of performance.

But at a significantly higher development and debugging cost. Why go for integer adaptation, if a P4 can do four FP operations in one clock, using SSE2? I have tested my 2.4GHGz P4 at 6 gigaflops, in a practical application doing matrix inversion. The theoretical maximum for my machine would be 9.6 Gflops. If you RTFA, you'll see they mention 3.6 Gflops performance for their cluster, about 60% of my single-processor system. I see no point at all in building that cluster.
Re:Floating point performance by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-26 08:16 · Score: 2, Informative

It's pretty much up to how good the compiler is.

If you use the Intel compiler and its vectorization stuff then you could easily do it in C. It will generate the SSE instructions.

Most compilers like GCC won't give you maximum performance without resorting to asm.
Re:Floating point performance by mi · 2004-02-26 08:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

Mars is not made any closer to Earth by the revelation, that Alpha Centauri is really far...
How about scientific computing?

This is why you might need the FP performance. I was answering a totally different question -- what would you do without the good floating point performance.
The other stuff shows your lack of knowledge of other disciplines by the fact that you think these are computationally expensive tasks.

Thank you, thank you.
Would you, please, demonstrate, how I can rebuild a project of 3000+ files, modified by 100+ developers (ccache helps, but still)? Or compress a 32Gb database dump? Granted, these tasks are nothing compared with, say, protein folding, but they are computationally expensive still.

--
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Re:Floating point performance by merlin_jim · 2004-02-26 08:54 · Score: 3, Informative

He used the VIA EPIA V8000A motherboard with an Eden core CPU. From what I found on google (here), the Eden core does run the FPU at full clock speed.

I have the VIA EPIA 8000 (not sure what the V and A modifiers mean), with an Ezra core. FYI, Eden isn't a core, it's an initiative. The VIA Eden is aka VIA EPIA 5000, and was the first fanless Mini-ITX. Eden was the development product moniker, and came to refer to the motherboard that was first produced from that initiative. It can also refer to any C3 CPU made to run fanless.

Back onto the original topic; my EPIA 8000 with an Ezra core runs the FPU at half clock. This document on the differences between the Ezra/Ezra-T and Nehemiah cores indicates that one of the fundamental differences between the two is the full speed FPU. So I doubt that the article you quoted is accurate...

Just some more info... Nehemiah was manufactured at 933 MHz, 1 GHz, and speeds up to 2 GHz are planned. The Ezra was manufactured at 533 MHz and 800 MHz in its first run; the 533 is also known as the Eden. The Ezra-T (the second run of the Ezra) was made at 600 MHz (aka Eden), 800 MHz, 933 MHz, and 1 GHz.

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Re:Floating point performance by addaon · 2004-02-26 09:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

If the heatsink is massive, and it's made of aluminum, it probably makes up a significant number of the atoms in the computer. As a result, the Pentium M mini-itx board probably uses more electrons. It also, purely coincidentally, uses more electricity than the Nehemiah boards.

Here's your link, by the way.

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Re:Floating point performance by addaon · 2004-02-26 09:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

See, that's how I used to think. G4 at 800MHz... 4 fp operations in parallel with altivec... 3.2GFlop goodness. But of course, why stop there? With various tuning, you can get up to 32-way parallel integer math (although going beyond 16, admittedly, sucks). 3.2 GFlop is nice, but 25.6 G-ops ain't too shabby.

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Re:Floating point performance by Enahs · 2004-02-26 09:10 · Score: 2, Informative

And modded "interesting" at that...you don't even need a benchmark to understand why a 1GHz Ezra isn't as fast as an AMD K6/2-550. On an Ezra, the FPU runs at half the speed of the CPU. The Nehemiah(sp?) doesn't have that handicap. Even so, instructions like cmov haven't been implemented.

Here's an old review. The VIA processors aren't built for speed; they're built for low power consumption. In that department, they're great. They're also relatively cool, temperature-wise.

I've got a machine based on a 1GHz Ezra; it's really not as bad as it sounds. Not a stellar machine, but it's got better performance than the K6-2 it replaced (but not a whole helluva lot better, especially when there's lots of floating-point math involved, for the reason stated above) and it doesn't require insane cooling techniques.

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Re:Floating point performance by gasmasher · 2004-02-26 09:39 · Score: 2, Informative

You had me all excited. The link is actually a microATX Socket 370, not a miniITX.
Re:Floating point performance by QuantumFTL · 2004-02-26 10:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

The floating point is just a convenience. Almost any algorithm can be modified to work with fixed point precision -- and without loss of performance.

Apparently you've never done any numerical computing, especially of the scientific variety. In an astrophysics simulation, for instance, the density of a field may span over 20 orders of magnitude, hardly reasonable to do with fixed point arithmetic.

Not to mention that many iterative algorithms can oscillate wildly in the presence of numerical error.

It is true that there are many other uses for a cluster besides numerical computing, however the idea that any floating point algorithm can be converted to fixed point could not be more wrong.

Disclaimer: My research at Cornell University is high performance clustered numerical computing.

Cheers,
Justin
Re:Floating point performance by QuantumFTL · 2004-02-26 14:33 · Score: 2, Interesting
Ugh. I was hoping to avoid a long discourse in the theory of computational arithmetic however you leave me no choice.

Point by point:

You did not get it. You are looking at the bit (and byte, and word) as a number. I suggest you look at it as a unit of information. With 64 bits you can only have 2^64 distinct possibilities. If you choose to treat them as numbers -- fine, you only have 2^64 distinct numbers.

Okay FYI I do remember first year discrete math, I have experience with inner details of computer architecturs, I understand two's compliment representation, IEEE floating format, how ALUs work for integer operations etc... I have read Shannon's information theory paper etc. What you are saying doesn't change the reality of the situation though, because you are looking at numbers without regard for the staggering dynamic range in real life scientific computations.

You may split the 64 bits to use some of them to represent the mantissa and some as the exponent. Or -- use all of them to represent the integer number of the smallest units in your application's domain.

Yes and both approaches have very different merits. For most numerically intensive programs, there are very specific requirements for numerical precision. All numerical programs are necessarily approximations to infinite precision arithmetic, and the following constraints are the norm:
- Additions/Subtractions of similar magnitudes must be accurate
- Multiplications/Divisions of very different magnitudes must be accurate.
- Square roots, trigonomic operations, and exponentiation must be accurate.
Now if you examine fixed point arithmetic, you will find that the first criterion is met, however the second and third are not met nearly as well as they are in FP of the same number of bits.

The nature of scientific operations is such that it makes sense to think about numerical calculations in terms of significant digits, due to the nature of error propagation in numerical arithmetic.

The second method, actually, gives you better precision in a controllable (by you) fashion. If the difference between the smallest and the biggest quantity of those minimal units in your application exceeds 64 orders of binary magnitude, than 64 bits is not enough for you -- regardless of whether you use floating or fixed point. You either lose precision (FP) or overflow (int).

It most certainly does not give better precision for the same number of bits used. Think of FP as a lossy compression algorithm. It allows the use of orders of magnitude less number of bits because it alters the density distribution of the representable numbers to meet the above specificiations.

Also you should note that many applications do not have a "basic unit". For instance, what is the "basic unit" of length? What if your "basic unit" of lenght is of a radicaly different exponent than your "basic unit" of energy or "basic unit" of time? In physics applications these basic units are near infinitesimal... we're talking 10^-51 or smaller! Then add to that that astrophysics simulations tend to work on scales that are 10 orders of magnitude greater than 1, you're talking about a dynamic range that is clearly rediculous!

The reason to use FP may be because it is more convenient to think in terms of standard units, rather than the minimal units of the application (its precision). Also, many CPUs have special features allowing to do FP computations really quickly. But it is possible to go without them.

The problem here is that you are thinking in terms of absolute error. In most cases it is the *relative* error that is important, not the absolute. Because of the exponential notation, relative error is minimized for any given number of bits used to represent numbers.

Another issue that you fail to mention is that integer overflow is rediculously easy to run into when using several multiplications in a row.
Re:Floating point performance by mangu · 2004-02-26 15:17 · Score: 2, Interesting

some matrices can be inverted with nothing more than a transpose

No, I tested it with a random matrix, as in

void matmuls() { int i, j, k, c1, c2, c3; char opa = 'N', opb = 'T'; float alfa, beta, s, *AT, *BT, *CT; AT = calloc(N * N, sizeof(float)); BT = calloc(N * N, sizeof(float)); CT = calloc(N * N, sizeof(float)); for (i = 0; i < N * N; i++) { AT[i] = (float)rand() / (float)RAND_MAX; BT[i] = (float)rand() / (float)RAND_MAX; } c1 = N; c2 = 1; c3 = 0; alfa = 1.0; beta = 0.0; gettimeofday(&tv, &tz); bs = tv.tv_sec; bu = tv.tv_usec; sgemm_(&opa, &opb, &c1, &c1, &c1, &alfa, AT, &c1, BT, &c1, &beta, CT, &c1); gettimeofday(&tv, &tz); du = tv.tv_usec - bu; ds = tv.tv_sec - bs; }
Re:Floating point performance by mi · 2004-02-26 17:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

Think of FP as a lossy compression algorithm. It allows the use of orders of magnitude less number of bits because it alters the density distribution of the representable numbers to meet the above specificiations.

This makes sense. With integers the density is uniform, which is impediment in some cases, but of help in others. [Any attempt to quantify the number of cases in each group is silly and will reveal nothing, but the attempter's personal bias. With my bias, I'll insist you are underestimating the number of cases, where such uniform distribution of density is useful and desirable.]
However, unless you carefully choose the basic unit, you don't have control over the precision distribution. If most of your computations involve quantities on far edges of (you claimed 20 orders of (decimal?) magnitude) -- you are less precise than you may realize and the (carefull) use of integers may improve your results.
Also you should note that many applications do not have a "basic unit".

Of course, they all have basic units! Usually, it will depend on the application's desired precision.
For instance, what is the "basic unit" of length?

Depends on the application. In yours, it is, probably, some fraction of light year.
What if your "basic unit" of length is of a radicaly different exponent than your "basic unit" of energy or "basic unit" of time?

Who cares? Even if my program operates internally on units as horrible as, say "pounds per square inch" (a.k.a. PSI) -- so be it. If 4.5 Newtons is my basic unit of force I want and the 0.025 meter is as precise as I want the length to be -- fine.
I'll leave the problem of how many bits it takes to achieve multiplication of four numbers of values from 0 to 10^30, base unit 1.

Wait, we started with 20 orders of magnitude. Is it 30 now? Fine, the 128 integers (long long) will be able to store that. But I don't believe, the tasks where so wide-ranging amounts of the same thing are common place (my bias?). Whether you are using floating or fixed point, you are not going to do this easily -- you'll risk losing precision dramaticly, or overflowing. Whichever it is, it is, probably, better to consider modifying the algorithm.
Also, the modern processors (at least -- Intel's) "cheat". Their FPU's internal precision is 80 bit by default (64 significant bits) -- if I'm reading ``icc -help'' output correctly. So they can "promote" the numbers to higher precision when applying precision-losing operations. So, floating point might win. :-)
In most cases it is the *relative* error that is important, not the absolute.

Very valid point. However, sometimes (often?) carefully picking the basic unit and the number of bits it is possible to avoid all computational imprecisions, simply by having more bits left at your disposal, whereas the blind use of the floating will mask them and further compound all other sources of errors (measurements, estimates, &c.)
And I don't even want to think about fixed point division by numbers very close to 0.

You don't need to think about it, because 1 is as close as you can get to zero with integers...
it requires that the basic unit be no larger than the smallest representable number in the floating point system

No it just has to match the smallest reasonably needed by the application -- something, it'll never need a half of. And I urge you to pick such units carefully even if you stick with floating point, because otherwise, even the smallest number in the floating point system might not be small enough at some point, and you will waste a few teracents of taxpayers' money :-)
That being said, I don't think, anyone else reads this, but us. It is hard to justify continuing the thread. Thanks for your input!

--
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Re:Floating point performance by QuantumFTL · 2004-02-26 19:00 · Score: 2, Informative

Wow... here we go again, my old comments in bold, parent in italics, and new comments plain old text. Good luck!

Think of FP as a lossy compression algorithm. It allows the use of orders of magnitude less number of bits because it alters the density distribution of the representable numbers to meet the above specificiations.

This makes sense. With integers the density is uniform, which is impediment in some cases, but of help in others. [Any attempt to quantify the number of cases in each group is silly and will reveal nothing, but the attempter's personal bias. With my bias, I'll insist you are underestimating the number of cases, where such uniform distribution of density is useful and desirable.] However, unless you carefully choose the basic unit, you don't have control over the precision distribution. If most of your computations involve quantities on far edges of (you claimed 20 orders of (decimal?) magnitude) -- you are less precise than you may realize and the (carefull) use of integers may improve your results.

My bias, having to do with this story and the great^n grandfather post is towards numerical cluster computing. Now I might be narrow sighted but having looked at the types of things which are generally done on supercomputing clusters (from books, web sites, and of course observing the supercomputing cluster which I work on, which is #50 in the world, so not exactly small) I see very few applications that do not have the requirements my previous post describes. Lots of multiplication and division by wildly different orders of magnitude... this can be found in almost all branches of science... only discrete math seems to have little of this.

Also it should be noted that through the use of interval arithmetic, you can quickly find the maximum bounds on the error in a given floating point program. This is something that, to my knowlege, fixed point arithmetic cannot support. So, the amount of error is actually quite evident to the experienced numerical computer, and not "more than I realize". Any kind of numerical processing requires people to be careful, fixed point most of all (because most languages don't have fixed point infix operator support, and all shifts etc must be done manually).

Also you should note that many applications do not have a "basic unit". Of course, they all have basic units! Usually, it will depend on the application's desired precision.

A basic unit is an absolute number, however most error bounds must be given as relative error, and if the range of inputs on the program is unknown, then it is impossible to derive a "basic unit". What's more, the numer is generally meaningless in the types of constrained numerical systems which I described. The granularity is usually only meaningful in terms of significant digits, not absolute differential units.

For instance, what is the "basic unit" of length? Depends on the application. In yours, it is, probably, some fraction of light year.

The unit length in our simulation is, I believe, the radius of the neutron star. This can be as little as 10-100 kilometers. It should also be noted that the "base unit" represents the minimum discernable difference in measurements, and therefore must be much much much smaller than that for accurate calculations after many many multiplications.

What if your "basic unit" of length is of a radicaly different exponent than your "basic unit" of energy or "basic unit" of time? Who cares? Even if my program operates internally on units as horrible as, say "pounds per square inch" (a.k.a. PSI) -- so be it. If 4.5 Newtons is my basic unit of force I want and the 0.025 meter is as precise as I want the length to be -- fine.

What do you mean who cares? The quintessential question here is the varying orders of magnitude involved in calcuations! not to mention the fact that to multiply fixed point numbers together you will have to find a common base unit,
Re:Floating point performance by QuantumFTL · 2004-02-27 05:45 · Score: 2, Informative

If you want to see what your tax dollars (and more likely) corporate dollars are doing (the cluster is mostly funded by a donation from intel) check out A list of research done at the cluster. I'm sure that you can find many of those things to be "useful". If you cannot, perhaps you should read up on the science behind those efforts, much of it is very relevant to solving real world engineering problems, and advancing the state of the art.

I would suggest that before you criticize a large research effort that you take a bit of your precious time to research it yourself first.

Also, we happen to live in a democracy, so feel free to vote for candidates that are not interested in promiting science, technology, and a better understanding of the universe. You do vote, right? And of course if you feel that our government doesn't represent you and never will, you can feel free to choose another country of residence...

Speaking of which, I seem to remember this weird network project that was funded by money spent on high energy particle physics. You know, that area of science that is so far from practical that it doesn't produce anything usable... I seem to remember this project being called the World Wide Web... A curiosity at best, we'll never see a return on our investment!

Pointy-Haired Boss by Vexler · 2004-02-26 07:01 · Score: 3, Funny

Just imagine Dilbert's boss asking him for a Beowulf cluster.

Kind of like that strip where he (the boss) wanted to have a SQL database in lime.

Re:Pointy-Haired Boss by Magus424 · 2004-02-26 07:05 · Score: 2, Funny

Actually, he though Mauve had the most RAM :)

--
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Inexpensive for testing purposes, by Space+cowboy · 2004-02-26 07:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

... but that's about all it'll be useful for. A Nehemiah CPU is really weedy by todays standards, even the 1GHz one is about the same as a 600MH P3. So, he's got 12 of them, which is probably less CPU power than an average dual P4 motherboard...

Still, you can get some stats on how the clustering works, what's the best algorithm for dispersing problems, and these boards are cheap, but that's about the only advantage I can see...

Simon

--
Physicists get Hadrons!

Re:Inexpensive for testing purposes, by addaon · 2004-02-26 07:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

I agree, but that's actually a very interesting use. It also lets you play around with network topologies, and interconnects, and such. And of course, these boards do have one PCI slot, as well as the standard assortment of serial and parallel, so the hardware people can have fun too. For real number crunching? Not a chance. For doing a $2000 prototype, in 15 nodes, of a $50000 50-node cluster? I can't really think of a more flexible, more convenient, or more affordable option. For doing a $1000, 6-node flexible network simulator, purely for education? Also more than worth it, with few other options around.

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I've had this sig for three days.
Re:Inexpensive for testing purposes, by Pidder · 2004-02-26 07:26 · Score: 3, Informative

There are no dual boards for normal P4s since they can't runt in SMP mode. You have to buy Xeons and they arn't exactely cheap. Dual AMD Athlons (the MP model or a modded XP) are your only option for a cheap dual desktop.
Re:Inexpensive for testing purposes, by jepaton · 2004-02-26 07:33 · Score: 5, Informative

A beowolf of mini-itx boards is probably the cheapest way to get bragging rights. As a practical way of fast and cheap parallel computation they are not.
However, I have purchased three (V10000 boards) thus far and intend to add more to my network as low power (as in Watts) servers.
I worked out that given the power of 10.78W (source: mini-itx.com's power comparison tool) for the V series (probably the one with the slowest CPU in the series, board only), I could save a fortune on electricity compared to a more regular computer.
The electricity company sells electricity at the rate of 0.63 ($1.18) per watt per year. Compared with a standard PC of 100W, I can regain the purchase costs (in savings) of the board and memory within two to three years.
Also, I found rack mount chassis available cheaper than one for a regular sized case. This influenced my decision a little - who doesn't want a network of rack mounted computers?
Overall, because of the low price and low power the mini-itx boards are a no brainer if and only if the CPU power of each computer isn't important.
Jonathan
Re:Inexpensive for testing purposes, by Brooks+Davis · 2004-02-26 07:33 · Score: 2, Informative

I actually have a small cluster of similar mini-itx boards (though in 1U chassis) for testing changes on our 160 node FreeBSD cluster. It's especially helpful as our main cluster is 1000 miles away so having a local cluster to use for crash tests is very helpful. I choose these systems because I've got enough powersucking servers on 24/7 at home. The ones I've got consume around 1/8th the power on a standard dual Xeon node at 1/5th the cost. Sure performance sucks, but who cares. It's there to do infrastructure development like testing OS config changes and hacking on the schedular or monitoring tools without breaking the main system.

-- Brooks

--
-- Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE.
Re:Inexpensive for testing purposes, by slashbofh · 2004-02-26 07:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

... but that's about all it'll be useful for. A Nehemiah CPU is really weedy by todays standards, even the 1GHz one is about the same as a 600MH P3. So, he's got 12 of them, which is probably less CPU power than an average dual P4 motherboard...

Why is it that most people think that 1 4GHz system is just as fast as 2 2GHz systems? This is the fallacy that never fails to irritate me. The fact is that for a lot of things, the number of machines matters. It's a pipeline, and a CPU can only do one thing at a time. For many application having multiple CPUs that are slower will give you faster response time than a single fast CPU. Of course, most people here don't get that, give it up when trying to talk to the PHB about it.
Re:Inexpensive for testing purposes, by Space+cowboy · 2004-02-26 07:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

I don't think they equate the same. I said CPU power, not measured performance. I remember sitting on a UK working group panel debating the Block-Synchronous Parallel computing strategy for highly-parallel systems. I was only there because it was good for my CV :-) But I did learn a reasonable amount, all those years ago...

That said, the only time a cluster of servers will do better than a fast single node is when the task divides well over the cluster. Great for clustered webservers, even distributed databases (in fact most server processes), but pretty damn useless if you're trying to do interactive work, or calculate something which *doesn't* divide well. Anything with time-dependent processing (ie: you need the results of the last step to calculate the current one) will run as slow as your fastest node, minus some for overhead...

This doesn't dispute your point of course, but I think the sense of how you said it over-stated the case for the usefulness of the system.

Simon

--
Physicists get Hadrons!
Re:Inexpensive for testing purposes, by merlin_jim · 2004-02-26 08:18 · Score: 2, Informative

So, he's got 12 of them, which is probably less CPU power than an average dual P4 motherboard...

RTFA... he compares performance to 4-6 P4s. He does clustering for a living so I'm assuming he knows how to measure and compare performance at this scale...

--
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Re:Inexpensive for testing purposes, by EvilTwinSkippy · 2004-02-26 08:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

Samba file server.
Samba throws open a hell of a lot of threads. (At least on my network of 200 people.) A cluster with each node posessing an external network port would be able to split the threads across dedicated processors. Not too useful for me, but if someone was trying to serve a few thousand clients at a time, that would be useful.
TMYK

--
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming

Seriously, though... by Short+Circuit · 2004-02-26 07:02 · Score: 5, Interesting

All things considered, what's the cost-per-tflop of that sort of system. These guys don't require as much cooling, space, or whatever else you care to think about.

Has anyone tried stuffing several into a single 1U chassis? For a sort of cluster of clusters?

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)

Re:Seriously, though... by drinkypoo · 2004-02-26 07:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

You could get (maybe) 2-4 boards into a deep 1U box. It would be better to use a ~6U box and put lots of them on their sides. You could make a 12" deep 6U with probably 18 or so of these things in it, without having to have cables coming out the front AND back of each box.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Seriously, though... by Unoti · 2004-02-26 07:28 · Score: 4, Funny

I prefer to not use a box. I get great heat dissipation that way. I've got my diskless nodes on a rack I bought for $3.99 at the container store that's used for drying dishes.
Re:Seriously, though... by fatgav · 2004-02-26 07:41 · Score: 4, Informative

The answer to this is...
Yes! (2) and Yes! (4)
Re:Seriously, though... by bhtooefr · 2004-02-26 10:40 · Score: 3, Interesting

A SIX U? No way do you need that much. As long as you're careful, a 4U gives you PLENTY of space. Giving 3" per board, you can put 6 boards wide. Allowing .5" between boards front to back, you need at least 14" deep. So, a 14" deep 4U will fit 12 of these. Make it 5U if you'd feel more comfortable that way, as these puppies don't put out much heat when there's just one, but when there's 12? Cool 12 like you would a single P4.

shuttle by trmj · 2004-02-26 07:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

My favorite use for those mini-itx boards is making a nice shuttle xpc. Cheap, fast gaming computers that are quite portable as well.

The only problem I've found so far is they ony come with nvidia onboard graphics, but that's what the agp slot is for.

--
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet

Imagine... by Anixamander · 2004-02-26 07:04 · Score: 5, Funny

...a new, original joke. Now imagine another one, because that last one wasn't that funny.

In fact, maybe you just aren't that funny. Except in Soviet Russia.

Shit, now I'm doing it.

--
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)

This with Chess by SamiousHaze · 2004-02-26 07:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

You know I seriously wonder if this would be a viable option for Computer chess programs (http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=25 ). It certainly is getting cheap to get massive hardware processing power.

Some preliminary performance results by JimmyQS · 2004-02-26 07:06 · Score: 5, Informative

We studied 3 mini beowulf systems a while back, here at University of Central Florida, one of which was a mini-ITX beowulf. Here's some info and preliminary results: http://helios.engr.ucf.edu/beowulf/miniature.phtml

Re:Some preliminary performance results by tommck · 2004-02-26 09:40 · Score: 2, Funny

You really did a Beowulf cluster? Wow. I could never have imagined that!

--
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.

Cool stuff ... by Lazy+Jones · 2004-02-26 07:07 · Score: 4, Interesting

This rocks - we were considering something similar for our clustering-R&D needs (for trying out new network file systems, failover solutions etc.), but we decided to go with plain P4 barebones instead. They can be stacked nicely, are relatively quiet and the fast CPUs with HT come in handy when you want good latencies at CPU-intensive tasks (dynamic websites etc.).

Here's a picture of our first 4 boxes. The USB stick seen sticking out from one of the boxes is bootable and an excellent replacement for floppy disks...

--
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)

Re:Cool stuff ... by Lazy+Jones · 2004-02-26 07:20 · Score: 4, Informative

> i'd assume your board has bios support for booting on usb?
Yes, I guess that most current BIOSes of the newer boards do, especially the consumer-ish stuff. We just used the stock Shuttle XPC with its FlexATX-board.

--
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Re:Cool stuff ... by Lazy+Jones · 2004-02-26 07:37 · Score: 2, Informative

Indeed - we'll probably switch to booting over the 'net when we have more boxes or need to try out kernel patches. Right now we boot each node from its 3,5" HDD, the USB stick was/is used for the installation only...

--
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)

Hmmm by captain_craptacular · 2004-02-26 07:08 · Score: 5, Funny

There was no cutting or bending involved. All metal bits were simply cut, drilled, and bolted together using 4-40 hardware.

So what was it? No cutting, or cutting?

--
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty nor security

FLASH... by Short+Circuit · 2004-02-26 07:08 · Score: 2, Interesting

Ouch...He's using flash as the HD for the computing nodes. Hope they're set to be mounted read-only.

Maybe he should consider PXE instead.

--
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)

Re:FLASH... by technomancerX · 2004-02-26 07:16 · Score: 5, Interesting

"He's using flash as the HD for the computing nodes"
Actually, he's not. IBM Micro Drives are not CF, they just have a CF form factor/interface to be compatible with hand held devices. They are hard drives.

--
.technomancer
Re:FLASH... by dabadab · 2004-02-26 07:55 · Score: 2, Informative

Despite the name, CF is NOT flash memory. The CompactFlash Association's definition is this:
"CompactFlash(R) is a small, removable mass storage device."

So you are correct in noting that he is actually using HDDs, not flash, but in the same time, he is using CompactFlash (BTW the CF pinout is IDE compatible, so to hook up your CF to your IDE bus all you have to do is to manage to connect the wires of the IDE cable and the power cable to the card)

--
Real life is overrated.

Whilst not clustering... by Alioth · 2004-02-26 07:09 · Score: 4, Interesting

Whilst not clustering, a good use for these low power systems would be for web hosts or budget dedicated servers. I'm sure a server room full of these would require much less airconditioning (and power) than the typical servers. Many people require dedicated servers for security (they are the only one on the box) and don't require fast FPU performance.

--
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows

Silly question, I know, but... by pegr · 2004-02-26 07:10 · Score: 4, Funny

Just what do you do with such a thing? I don't mean obvious commercial uses, but as a home-bound geek, what reason can I use to justify this to my wife?

Test Text. by F34nor · 2004-02-26 07:11 · Score: 4, Informative

I built a Mini-ITX based massively parallel cluster named PROTEUS. I have 12 nodes using VIA EPIA V8000, 800 MHz motherboards. The little machine is running FreeBSD 4.8, and MPICH 1.2.5.2. Troubles installing and configuring Free BSD and MPICH were few. In fact, there were no major issues with either FreeBSD or MPICH.

The construction is simple and inexpensive. The motherboards were stacked using threaded aluminum standoffs and then mounted on aluminum plates. Two stacks of three motherboards were assembled into each rack. Diagonal stiffeners were fabricated from aluminum angle stock to reduce flexing of the rack assembly.

The controlling node has a 160 GB ATA-133 HDD, and the computational nodes use 340 MB IBM microdrives in compact flash to IDE adapters. For file I/O, the computational nodes mount a partition on the controlling node's hard drive by means of a network file system mount point.

Each motherboard is powered by a Morex DC-DC converter, and the entire cluster is powered by a rather large 12V DC switching power supply.

With the exception of the metalwork, power wiring, and power/reset switching, everything is off the shelf.

At present, the idle power consumption is about 140 Watts (for 12 nodes) with peaks estimated at around 200 Watts. The machine runs cool and quiet. The controlling node has 256 MB RAM , and an 160 GB ATA 133 IDE hard disk drive. The computational nodes have 256 MB RAM, each and boot from 340 MB IBM microdrives by means of compact flash to IDE adapters. The computational nodes mount /usr on the controlling node via NFS, for storage and to allow for a very simple configuration. No official benchmarks have been run, but for simple computational tasks the mini cluster appears to be faster than four 2.4 GHz pentium 4 mcahines used in parallel, at a fraction of the cost and power use.

Power and Cooling

Mini-ITX boards have very low power dissipation as compared to most motherboard/cpu combination in popular use today. This means that a Mini-ITX cluster with as many as 16 nodes won't need special air conditioning. Low power dissipation also means low power use, so you can use a single inexpensive UPS to provide clean AC power for the nodes.

In contrast, a 12-16 node cluster built with Intel or AMD processors will generate enough heat that you will likely need heavy duty air conditioning. Additionally, you will need adequate electrical power to deliver the 2-3 kilowatts peak load that your 12 node PC cluster will require. Plan on having higher than average utility bills if you use PC's...

Hardware Construction

The cluster is built in two nearly identical racks. Each rack has two stacks of three motherboards and dc-dc converters mounted on aluminum standoffs.

The compact flash adapters used to mount the microdrives are also in stacks of three. Each stack of boards is mounted on a 7 inch by 10 inch 0.0625 thick 6061-T6 aluminum plate as are the microdrive stacks. There are seven metal plates in all, in each rack.

The top cover plate has the mounting bracket for the 6 on/off/reset switches.

The plate below it is home to the power distribution terminal block. The power delivery cable for each rack is heavy duty 14 gauge stranded wire with pvc insulation. The power cabling from the terminal strip to each of the dc-dc converters is 18 gauge stranded pvc insulated hookup wire. The wiring for the power/reset switches is 24 gauge stranded, pvc insulated wire.

The top rack houses nodes one through six (node one is the controlling node). The bottom plate of the top rack also houses the 160 GB ATA-133 hard disk drive used by the controlling node. All other nodes make use of the IBM microdrives. Node number three has a spare compact flash adapter which can be used to duplicate microdrives for easy node maintenance.

The disk drive and power cabling to the motherboards was dressed as was sanely possible on the back panel. The liberal use of nylon cable ties helps reduce the ten

Just because you can... by caffeinefiend · 2004-02-26 07:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yet another example of why you shouldn't do everything that you can do! These puppies aren't exactly famous for their flop-per-dollar ratio. In truthfully, it would be more efficient ( and cost effective) to make the cluster out of PIIIs. Anyhow, I'm off to go cluster a few toaster ovens, I hear that they offer a great delicious to efficiency ratio. Chris

Re:Just because you can... by enkidu · 2004-02-26 07:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

Efficiency can take on many meanings depending on what your objective function looks like. Undoubtedly you can get more FLOP for the $. But that isn't why you'd use a setup like this. I could also see a use for this if you were trying to optimize for FLOPs / Watt. Or FLOPs / dB. Or FLOPs / ft^3. This kind of a computing setup seems to be optimized for low-power, low noise, low-maintenance and small space uses. I can definitely envision scenarios where you could optimally arrive at such a setup.

--

There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

slashdotted already? by cetan · 2004-02-26 07:14 · Score: 5, Informative

sheesh that didn't take long.

I managed to get it mirrored here:
page 1:
http://www.phule.net/mirrors/mini-itx-cluster.html
page 2:
http://www.phule.net/mirrors/mini-itx-cluster2.htm l
page 3:
http://www.phule.net/mirrors/mini-itx-cluster3.htm l

--
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!

more information ... by Lazy+Jones · 2004-02-26 07:14 · Score: 3, Informative

Oh, I forgot: each of these boxes contains a 2,8GHz P4 Northwood CPU (200/800MHz FSB), 1GB RAM. The Shuttle barebone used is the S75G2 and one of the reasons we chose it was that it has an on-board gigabit ethernet adapter. The CPU cooler that came with it is also very interesting - it uses a rather unique design with a heatpipe ...

--
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)

heh I got obligatory for ya by aztektum · 2004-02-26 07:24 · Score: 2, Funny

They musta been runnin' their webserver on one!

*ba dum ch*

--
:: aztek ::
No sig for you!!

Mini-ITX? Bah! Nano-ITX!!! by Cpt_Kirks · 2004-02-26 07:26 · Score: 3, Informative

I can't wait for the new, smaller nano-itx boards to come out. 4.5" on a side, 1GHZ CPU and draws 7 watts. I got an email from VIA claiming they will be released in April.

MB, slim DVD and laptop HD in a case the size of a large paperback book!

It will make my "K-Mart Toolbox Mini-ITX PVR" look like a full tower in comparison!

Re:I built a fanless ITX system... by addaon · 2004-02-26 07:27 · Score: 3, Informative

Six times as much as what? My entire mini-itx system was under $500, and most of the cost of that was a solid-state drive large enough for a decent linux distribution... and most of the rest was a touch-screen monitor.

--

I've had this sig for three days.

Sounds Fun by RAMMS+EIN · 2004-02-26 07:28 · Score: 5, Interesting

I have been thinking about this lately. I get disgusted by the fanns everywhere (especially since the one in my laptop makes an awful amount of noise sometimes and still doesn't prevent the beast from overheating and shutting down). Aside from being noisy, computers have way more CPU power than I need, and cost more than I am willing to spend. And they suck up a lot of power. (Some might add that they take a lot of space.)

I think all of these could be solved at once. What if someone built low-power, low-noise, and low-cost computer, good enough for running light office applications? I don't mean OpenOffice, but rather lightweight programs that implement the functionality people use _without_ the bloat. My 486 handles email just fine and the WYSIWYG word processors were once satisfied with a first-generation Pentium (and even these were already bloated).

Current PDAs have more than enough processing power to handle those tasks, and I've noticed that company's like gumstix build and sell devices almost like what I have in mind (the gumstix don't seem to have display connectors, though). Hey, these machines could actually be portable and have a really decent battery life (more than a full working day); that would be a killer!

Am I just daydreaming here or are others with me? Maybe you know of devices that do this job? Someone recommended Sharp's Zaurus, which is excellent, but still rather more expensive than what I have in mind.

--
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.

Massively Parallel by Seanasy · 2004-02-26 07:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

I built a Mini-ITX based massively parallel cluster named PROTEUS. I have 12 nodes using VIA EPIA V8000, 800 MHz motherboards.

I'd just like to point out that 12 nodes is not "massively parallel."

Re:Massively Parallel by imsabbel · 2004-02-26 11:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

leave it away. Or do you know a cluster that isnt parallel?
12Nodes is as small as clusters can be, so "a small cluster" would be a better description than "a massivly parallel cluster".

(But it really looks cool, and 12v dc via lab psu is cool,too.)

--
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?

Re:Why Microdrives? by Gothmolly · 2004-02-26 07:36 · Score: 2, Informative

But they'd produce more noise and heat, and cost more power. Besides, nowadays 340 Microdrives are cheap.

--
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.

A beowulf cluster of FreeBSD machines? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-26 07:37 · Score: 2, Interesting

I had no idea all this stuff ran on FreeBSD, but apparently it does. A bit of googling turned up an article on a pretty decent size cluster running FreeBSD at aerospace corporation, and other clusters running FreeBSD too. What with Mac OS X being used widely for clusters, and FreeBSD, it sounds like Linux is no longer the only name in the game. So question: do people consider FreeBSD or OS X clusters also to be Beowulf clusters, or is there some other name?

Oh my goodness! by Greedo · 2004-02-26 07:38 · Score: 4, Funny

You are someone who actually did imagine a beowulf cluster of those!

Around here, that must make you a god!

--
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.

Don't use FP for money by bluGill · 2004-02-26 07:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

Perhaps many people would insist on using FP dollars and cents, but those people are fools, and it is very easy to part them with their money. Just make sure all the rounding errors work out in your favor, which isn't hard if you have access to their accounts.

Yeah I know that for small numbers FP has no rounding errors, but that doesn't last long.

Re:Don't use FP for money by dborelli · 2004-02-26 08:40 · Score: 3, Funny

Think "Office Space" people...

Peter Gibbons: Um, the 7-Eleven, right? You take a penny from the tray.
Joanna: From the crippled children?
Peter Gibbons: No, that's the jar. I'm talking about the tray, the pennies for everybody.

Re:I built a fanless ITX system... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-26 07:57 · Score: 2, Funny

i'm looking to get one for a database machine, any pointers?

Here's a pointer: 0x00fe358e.
You're welcome!

One use I thought of right away... by temojen · 2004-02-26 07:59 · Score: 2, Insightful

It would be quite useful for a university with an undergraduate course in high performance computing to have their own little NoRMA cluster to play with without the space, heat, and power consumption of a supercomputer.

Let the researchers use the real supercomputer, but the undergraduates can still play with message passing parallel algorythms to their hearts content.

I wonder too by Atario · 2004-02-26 08:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well...I'd be able to get major numbers in SETI@Home...um...

Video encoding? (Now, where'd I put that parallel-processing version of AVISynth?)

Rent it out to a university?

Program it to solve chess and leave it going till it does?

Get a decent frame rate in any FPS, once and for all? (Note to self: develop parallel-processing graphics card.)

--
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt

Re:I wonder too by merlin_jim · 2004-02-26 08:57 · Score: 3, Informative

Video encoding? (Now, where'd I put that parallel-processing version of AVISynth?)

dyne:bolic is a Live CD distribution, very small, that can be PXE boot, with full audio/video capture/editing/processing/streaming capabilities plus the usual suite of tools, a few games and whatnot... and is auto-clustering on a private network.

--
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!

Re:I built a fanless ITX system... by addaon · 2004-02-26 08:13 · Score: 3, Informative

What characteristics do you want? There are two major types of solid state drives -- battery-backed ram, and flash ram. Both are expensive and small. Only one is fast.

My requirements were essentially (1) no moving parts, (2) affordable if not cheap, and (3) small. I settles on one of these. Debian is fine on 128MB, with 512MB of ram and no swap. Performance, it should be said, sucks. The next step up, for slightly more performance, much more capacity, and a whole lot more cost, is here; but I wanted to avoid using a case that needed drive bays, plus I haven't pockets that deep.

Neither of those is likely to be what you want for a database system, though. You're probably more in the market for a bunch of ram and a battery, unless your primary concern is reliability. If speed is the goal, you want this, or, for more capacity and more money, this. Note that I haven't used either extensively, and in playing around with the rocket a little, I was surprised just how much of a bottleneck PCI became. Also, the rocket doesn't have a battery... so really, unless you have a board with 8GB of memory, and you just need another 8GB of low latency space, it's not such a great deal today.

If you fit into any of the niches above, solid state is wonderful. It's always more expensive than you think, though. And for any database systems I've dealt with, a disk is without question the way to go, perhaps with more memory on board. But if you want any further tips, I'm glad to help.

--

I've had this sig for three days.

HA-Cluster on Mini-itx boards by DeBaas · 2004-02-26 08:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

Not as impressive as their performance cluster, but perhaps interesting as well, we build a High Availability cluster more than a year ago based on mini-itx boards: HA-cluster
It was used for demonstration, but the mini-itx machines are still used quite a bit for testing etc.

--
---

Why this particular set of software / booting? by merlin_jim · 2004-02-26 08:39 · Score: 4, Interesting

I mean, those IBM 340 MB microdrives aren't really that cheap... you can get full size hard drives for the same price...

I've always wondered; why not PXE boot something like this? Set your node controller to also do DHCP and you're set.

While you're at it, use the CL version for the controller which has two network cards and build a NATTING firewall into the node controller too. Then you have a plug-in appliance that doesn't interfere with your network topology at all. PXE boot it and the motherboards will only need RAM.

The board he used is available for $99 with proc. A stick of 256 is probably around $20.

The best price froogle would give me on the drives he's using is $60, and they're prone to wear and tear.

Add in the $10 CF-IDE adapter and the drive is %60 of the cost of the motherboard itself...

Hell if you don't want the network bogged down with a bunch of PXE booting nodes all the time, just get cheap CD drives and put dyne:bolic on it, which does automagic clustering...

Personally, if I were to do it, I'd set dynebolic to PXE boot, get a huge stack of motherboards and RAM, and do it that way. Then adding/changing nodes is relatively simple... IIRC, they're even factory set to try PXE booting if no IDE devices are found...

The only other change I would make would be to ditch the 16-port switch... move to 4-ports, connect those to a 4-port with gigabit uplink, and connect that to a gigabit switch. Of course at this point I'm talking about really scaling the cluster up, to a few hundred nodes or so. At that point I'd stop using a mini-ITX board for my node controller and go with a motherboard with a bit more juice behind it, dual procs, RAID 0/1, the whole shebang...

Now if only I had a couple grand burning a hole in my pocket... speaking of which:

motherboard: $100
RAM: $20
DC-DC converter: $30
CF adapter: $10
Microdrive: $60

Total: $220
Total PXE booter: $150
Savings: 30%

So, not counting the costs of cabinets, power rectifier/UPS, wiring, network gear, and labor, you can increase the size of your cluster by %30 for the same cost, just for setting up PXE boot...

--
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!

Beowulf. The REAL deal. by madpierre · 2004-02-26 09:16 · Score: 4, Informative

LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!
Oft Scyld the Scefing from squadroned foes,
from many a tribe, the mead-bench tore,
awing the earls. Since erst he lay
friendless, a foundling, fate repaid him:
for he waxed under welkin, in wealth he throve,
till before him the folk, both far and near,
who house by the whale-path, heard his mandate,
gave him gifts: a good king he!
To him an heir was afterward born,
a son in his halls, whom heaven sent
to favor the folk, feeling their woe
that erst they had lacked an earl for leader
so long a while; the Lord endowed him,
the Wielder of Wonder, with world's renown.
Famed was this Beowulf

Sample from the Project Gutenberg Text of Beowulf.

Why not do yourself a favour and download it. Classic stuff. :)

--
siggy played guitar

FPUs of the future? Re:Floating point performance by ziegast · 2004-02-26 09:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

Mod me....

Informative:

If you're looking for a small form factor for high-end processors, you will likely find future products using the picoBTX form factor. The motherboard layout provides better cooling for hot processors that mini-ITX can't address. Here's a summary of the BTX form factors from Anandtech.

Interesting:

Has anyone figured out how to use the floating point power in their graphics cards for non-video applicaitons? Those things are becoming powerful that they use their own heat sinks. Just like we had floating point chips for the 486SX series, perhaps it will be more cost-effective and power-effective in the future to separate commodity, low-cost, and low-power I/O processing from floating point processing.

If graphics card developers start thinking of their cards as being more like floating point coprocessors and less like device controllers, they can help drive future floating point computing and leave traditional central processors to manage memory and I/O.

Redundant:

Imagine a beowulf cluster of video cards!

-ez

Disclaimer: I use a 500MHz Celeron on my desk and a 300MHz laptop at home. I'm not a luddite - I just don't utilize a 3D "rich" graphical environment to surf the web, create documents, and manage computers.

Flops/$$$ = free by poptones · 2004-02-26 11:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

As a green geek I can't resist pointing out this merit: with only a 200W power dissipation this would be "home friendly" even in a non air conditioned house during the hot Mississippi summers. And with only a 200W PEAK draw, the entire system could be powered by a single PV panel and one or two storage batteries. Trade the "high quality UPS" for a couple of batteries and a PV panel (or cheaper still if you're in the midwest or near a coastline, a windmill) and you have a cluster that could run without any "store bought" AC at all.

Power. by Absurd+Being · 2004-02-26 13:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

Your P4 uses what, >300W? This cluster has a peak load of 200W. Plus you can do more varieties of hardware interfacing at once. That's a reason to build this cluster, if you don't find that clustering things because you can to be a good enough reason.

--
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness

Re:Power. by mangu · 2004-02-26 15:41 · Score: 2, Informative

Your P4 uses what, >300W? This cluster has a peak load of 200W.

Well, I just applied my, admittedly imprecise, clamp ammeter to the power cable, and got ~2 amps @ 120 V = 240 W. Which means, 240W/6Gflops = 40W/Gflop. That cluster has 200W/3.6 Gflops = 55.555... W/Gflop. Slightly worse...

I admit that hardware interfacing is getting to be a problem for us hobbyists, since the demise of the ISA bus, but I have been able to get along with the parallel interface. I just hope the USB interface doesn't get too popular too soon!

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