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Apple Releases Xgrid Technology Preview 2

Posted by pudge on from the super-size-my-computational-ability dept.

dark_lotus writes "Apple has announced the availability of Xgrid Technology Preview 2. This version improves on Xgrid's breakthrough ease-of-use by adding the most requested features, including an 'xgrid' command-line utility, support for MPI jobs, and a comprehensive Xgrid User's Guide, as well as numerous bug fixes. Groovy!"

8 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Impact? by OECD · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Will this negatively impact ("replace") SETI@home, folding@home, etc.? Or will it make it easier for them to add/support Macs?

    --
    One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
  2. Well Done, Apple! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I love Rendezvous, and how easy it makes the set up of home networks/printers/etc..., and I have been using XGrid - just playing around - since Preview 1. I believe that XGrid will make things like VTech's supercomputer accessible to even more schools - perhaps not on as big of a scale hardware-wise, but it will certainly make it easy software-wise.

  3. Oh Sweet Jebus! not Rendezvous! by bob_calder · · Score: 0, Interesting

    I suppose I will have to turn on that piece of broadcasting evil in my network now. Please say it isn't so. I thought I had eradicated every bit of network-clogging trash and now. . . .

    --
    Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
    1. Re:Oh Sweet Jebus! not Rendezvous! by Lars+T. · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Understanding Zeroconf and Multicast DNS
      Author and Editor's Note: Networking was never supposed to be hard -- but it is. At best it's an annoyance, at worst it's a show stopper. Granny May's got her new printer and after hooking it up, she just can't get it to print across the network, damnit. But an emerging standard, Zeroconf, just might help networking become what we've always wanted it to be: easy.
      BTW, as a network professional you surely know the difference between broadcasting and multicasting? What are your thoughts on DHCP? What does "Job Protection" mean to you?
      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

  4. Socioeconomic Commentary by BandwidthHog · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I found this little blurb on the site (under the tachometer graphic) interesting:

    As more people on the network share their resources, you can solve more problems. Not a bad metaphor for life, either.


    Wonder how long that'll survive the watering-down by the marketroids, relatively benign though they may be at The Mothership.
    --

    Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
  5. Xgrid for folding@home and Photoshop? by Selecter · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The second Xgrid came out, I wanted to know how it could be used for Folding@Home and the RC-5 challenge and so on. Of course Apple has a story up now about Folding@Home and how good the G5 is at it, which is very very good but still not the best. I wrote Vijay Pande and he said they are watching it closely and when it matures they would exploit it for Folding@Home.

    When you can use xgrid and enable any type of grid enabled program that might use Rendevous and some simple plug in of some kind to use however many Macs there are on a given network to crunch away at something is the day Apple will start making serious inroads again. Imagine a Photoshop Mac pool at a Ad agency using Xgrid, or the same thing at the movie making place with Final Cut Pro 5 or whatever.

    I really do like the directions that Apple is going in these days. Stock market does not seem to mind either. :)

  6. Tying into OS X and other new uses. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think you will see new uses that haven't been thought of. I can't give an example because I haven't thought of them yet. ;-)

    It would also make current tasks even better. For example:

    You would be able to fork a new process transparently to under used machines. The OS would know which machines were under-utilized (the iMac someone's kids use when at home, for example) and if it was maxed out, it would send the process to that other machine. All of it transparent to the user.

    xgrid is great for *applications* usage *now*.

    Apple will incorporate it into the OS itself and it will become even more useful when it makes usage of the CPU cycles (disk transfer perhaps too by sending disk bound processes to another machine) available to anyone on the network who needs them without user interaction.

    Other uses:
    * iMovie and iDVD encoding farmed out to other machines on the network.
    * The Mac equivalent of MythTV (or TiVo or ReplayTV) uses other machines to encode if one is busy.

  7. Dynamic load balancing by Derek+Mason · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know why Apple haven't released an OS X version of the OpenMosix project, which works wonders on Linux. It moves processes automatically between nodes while they are running, automatically re-routing disk and network access, and copying memory data across. Needs tricky work on the kernel, but combined with Rendezvous technology, it could be a killer. Your heavy tasks would be automatically routed around the workgroup, as and when is appropriate, even if they are only half-way complete.