10 Years of Beowulf Clustering

Quirk writes "Wired News has a blurb celebrating the 10th birthday of the Beowulf cluster. Attendees recalled the initial fear and loathing the Beowulf project had to overcome. The Beowulf project takes its name from an epic poem penned circa 1000 A.D."

Comments

Strange...

[PapayaSF]

...it feels like I've been reading Beowulf cluster jokes on Slashdot for longer than that....

Re:Strange...

[Richard Dick Head]

I know what you mean...it actually seemed like a Beowulf cluster of 10th anniversaries.

Re:Strange...

[ModernGeek]

Especially when slashdot isn't even near 10 years old :)

Re:Strange...

[xsupergr0verx]

... Imagine 10 more years of Beowulf cluster jokes!

Re:Strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

Google: "imagine a beowulf cluster" site:slashdot.org

313 pages. Nuff said.

It seems like a good time..,

[Omestes]

Imagine a beowolf cluster of x

Couldn't resist.

Next up the 10th aniversary of the
1. xxx
2. ?
3. PROFIT!

model of buisness.

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[sinnfeiner1916]

in soviet russia, the next aniversary is you! but i guess that aniversary is past (fall of soviet union)

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[Anonymous Coward]

model of buisness

Ah! The mis-spelling of common everyday words. Yet another /. tradition.

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[duguk]

Next up the 10th aniversary of the

1. xxx

2. ?

3. PROFIT!

model of buisness.

Thats December 16th 2008, people!

Lets start planning the party now!

Dug

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[Veridium]

Don't you mean: 1. *DANCING* 2. ? 3. *HAPPY TIME*!

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, my calendar just marked me! ;)

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[Anonymous Coward]

"misspelling" is not hyphenated.

Don't be a spelling Nazi if you're going to misspell words in your own post.

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[Anonymous Coward]

The tenth anniversary... IN JAPAN!

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[bulliver]

..don't you mean:

1. Liquor
2. ???
3. Wake up in dumpster

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[Anonymous Coward]

His post was a reference to the ORZ, a race from Star Control II. Check the parent posters sig to understand.

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[Zen Punk]

That is obviously a typographical error and not a mispelling. I'm sure you're aware of the difference and how to discern one from the other through context, jackass.

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[Omestes]

Yay! You *smell* like a *happy camper*!
Don't forget the *sauce*!

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, Beowulf clusters YOU!

Re:It seems like a good time..,

[Lord Kano]

Just wait for the goatse 10 year anniversary.

That's one "Blow Out" party that I'm going to be sure to miss.

LK

Oh Lord..

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well have posted "Hey, practice your cliche overuse in here!"

Re:Oh Lord..

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, cliche overuse in here practices YOU!

I'm gonna get modded down for this, but...

[Quattro Vezina]

I, for one, welcome our new beowulf cluster overlords.

Re:I'm gonna get modded down for this, but...

[grolschie]

Yeah but does it run Linux?

Re:I'm gonna get modded down for this, but...

[StandardDeviant]

In Soviet Russia, Linux runs YOU!

(actually, with the increasing sophistication of implanted prosthetics like pacemakers and such... someday it very well might. "root@heart# echo 60 > /proc/sys/heart/bpm" )

Re:I'm gonna get modded down for this, but...

[spare.dave]

it does... in Japan!

Re:I'm gonna get modded down for this, but...

[Luigi30]

I, for one, welcome a beowulf cluster of Linux-running overlords here to profit from Soviet Russia.

Re:I'm gonna get modded down for this, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you mean "I, for one, welcome a beowulf cluster of our new overlords".

Imagine /. Without Beowulf

[SEWilco]

In pointing out Beowulf clustering, I might have started the "Imagine a Beowulf cluster..." catchphrase.

I'm somewhat sorry.
Now go and cluster something.

Re:Imagine /. Without Beowulf

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what was stupider, starting the cliche, or taking credit for it while logged in.

Re:Imagine /. Without Beowulf

[Anonymous Coward]

Not even close. It was that troll who was named after the main character from "American Psycho".

Re:Imagine /. Without Beowulf

[SEWilco]

Ah, but I think I posted it before while logged in. I waited quite a while before creating my login, so I am not certain when I said what.

Finally!!

[kb9vcr]

I was just thinking, we never talk about beowolf custers anymore!!

I wonder, can we beowolf custer a beowulf cluster?! ;)

Re:Finally!!

[CoolGuySteve]

I wonder, can we beowolf custer a beowulf cluster?! ;)

You might be interested in grid computing, in which a group of academics with heads too big for their common good decide not to build one fucking huge computer in one place, but instead spend all their grant money on fiber transceivers and other equipment that can transfer at a few dozen GBit between far less powerful clusters. Whenever you see a grid built with modern equipment (rather than one that strings together a few older machines), it means the people involved at some level were playing politics so that they could 'me too' their department into owning a piece of it.

I once watched some of this process in motion, which helped to smack down a far more sensical and quite impressive machine proposal, and found the whole thing to be entirely retarded.

Re:Finally!!

[samhalliday]

You might be interested in grid computing, in which a group of academics with heads too big for their common good

you seem to have overlooked the fact that these people are indeed academics... the people who push boundaries and bring about new ways of doing things. grid computing isn't working now, but when the technology is in place for it, it will be revolutionary. these kind of ideas don't work first time round, and certainly don't fix themselves overnight.

your ignorance to the sheer amount of information processing which will be required by, for example the new generation of projects at CERN, is perhaps the reason why you do not see the need for grid computing.

I once watched some of this process in motion, which helped to smack down a far more sensical and quite impressive machine proposal, and found the whole thing to be entirely retarded.

that is no fault of grid computing... the blame must be placed upon the persons who chose the wrong solution. grid computing is nowhere near ready to be used. the only people who should be playign with it should be people who wish to aid the current research. it is equivalent to running a beta kernel with debian unstable on a production server. if they had work to be done, then a cluster would have been a more sensible option.

Re:Finally!!

[shawnl]

So I guess you would call that a Beowolf cluster-fuck...

Here's your BIG chance!

[FunWithHeadlines]

Ah, finally, a story where all those 'imagine a Beowulf cluster of...' comments actually would be ON TOPIC! Naturally that means there won't be that many, other than comments such as this one that is commenting on such comments...a meta-comment about Beowulf clusters. Speaking of which, can you imagine a meta-cluster...oh never mind...

Re:Here's your BIG chance!

[NeoSkandranon]

Don't you mean "Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of meta-comments?"

Re:Here's your BIG chance!

[Wild Bill TX]

Ah, finally, a story where all those 'imagine a Beowulf cluster of...' comments actually would be ON TOPIC!

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those...

Mod parent up, for the good of slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone's a comic.

You mean...

[Purple_Walrus]

...the South Park episode?

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

imagine a beowulf cluster of people with asses where their heads should be.

Re:You mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really.

Re:You mean...

[tarunthegreat2]

*closes eyes tightly and concentrates, looking constipated*.....Okay.....I'm imagining them....what next?

Re:You mean...

[Beardydog]

2. ?

Re:Obligatory comment

[sploo22]

How about a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf-cluster-joke-making /. drones? We seem to have plenty of them lying around.

Oh wait...

At Last

[Spencerian]

Imagine a Slashdot topic full of Beowulf clusters...

Re:At Last

[DarkBlackFox]

Imagine a Slashdot topic full of Beowulf cluster comments!

Re:At Last

[Spellbinder]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of moderators, modding those posts down

Re:At Last

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd probably still return 503 errors...

Re:At Last

[TimeTrav]

In SOVIET RUSSIA, Beowulf cluster jokes comment on YOU!

Re:If I was going to post a LINUX STORY...

[sploo22]

Do you not have eyes?

Re:If I was going to post a LINUX STORY...

[simcop2387]

ok i know this is a troll but he's WRONG!

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/02/14 59211&tid=155&tid=106&tid=218

it was on the front page on Monday August 2nd. at least when you troll make sure it wasn't actually on the front page?

Yeah, but...

[pyrrhonist]

Okay, now imagine a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf cluster anniversaries. Oh, man, I just blew my mind!

Re:Yeah, but...

[Richard Dick Head]

Beat you by a minute ;P

Re:Yeah, but...

[the pickle]

But how many Beowulf clusters in a googol?

p

Re:Yeah, but...

[pyrrhonist]

Beat you by a minute ;P

Yeah, but your delivery... ;)

Sad

[maelstrom]

The blurb doesn't explain what a beowulf cluster is, but explains what the origin of the name is. Are slashdot readers that ignorant?

Re:Sad

[Daniel Dvorkin]

[shrug] Different standards for ignorance; most people would recognize the origin of the name*, but wouldn't have any idea what a B. cluster is. And by /. standards, that's igorance. I'm a believer in the "one culture," myself -- if you don't recognize either, there's a serious gap in your knowledge.

*I may be giving "most people" too much credit, of course.

Re:Sad

[JudgeFurious]

Of course not. We know what a beowulf cluster is.

But just imagine what you could do with a beowulf cluster of ignorant slashdot readers....

Re:Sad

[NotAJock]

Becuase of your low UID, I'm guessing that you aren't asking what a Beowulf cluster is - so you're right on the mark with your comment. So for those Slashdotters who don't actually know what a Beowulf cluster is, here's my blurb (feel free to add/subtract/etc - this is paraphrased from a longer piece I wrote some time ago):

Beowulf aims at minimizing computation time. One option for reducing the processing time of a program is to divide it into independent sub-tasks that can be processed by different CPUs. When the results of these sub-tasks are available, they can be returned to one of the processors for final processing. It is possible to use Ethernet transfers to extend this strategy across multiple computers. This is how Beowulf works: divide programs into many parts that are executed by many CPUs all of which transfer their data and instructions via Ethernet.

Re:Sad

[devilspgd]

But just imagine what you could do with a beowulf cluster of ignorant slashdot readers....

Nothing?

Re:Sad

[tarunthegreat2]

Er... produce content typical of any Slashdot post?.... Yea

Re:Sad

[Sparr0]

But just imagine what you could do with a beowulf cluster of ignorant slashdot readers....

This?

Re:Sad

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

"But just imagine what you could do with a beowulf cluster of ignorant slashdot readers....

Nothing?"

But damned if we wouldnt get it done fast.

Reminds me of the linus quote about executing infinite loops faster than other operating systems

Re:Sad

[the_consumer]

A serious gap if you don't know what a Beowulf cluster is? Taking things a bit far, aren't you? Or are you just talking about /.ers? If som then I guess you're right...

Re:Sad

[SuperQ]

yep.. it's funny any time some noob wants to talk about clustering, they start with beowulf. I recently attended a clustering summit in minneapolis, and I did't think I heard the term Beowulf used even once. We discussed things like clustering filesystems, HPC vs. HA clusters, and we had a great talk on http://openssi.org/ and samba clustering.

I have yet to see anyone actualy using Beowulf.

Re:Sad

[tverbeek]

The blurb doesn't explain what a beowulf cluster is, but explains what the origin of the name is. Are slashdot readers that ignorant?

About Old English literature? You bet, at least a substantial number of them are. And you'll find lit students who know all about Hrunting and Grendel's Mom, but are equally clueless about system clustering.

An aside to Lord-of-the-Rings-loving geeks: Tolkein was a scholar of Beowulf, and drew substantial inspiration from it. It isn't as easy a read as Tolkein (even in a Modern English translation; the original is barely recognisable as English), but you might enjoy it.

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Becuase of your low UID, I'm guessing that you aren't asking what a Beowulf cluster is - so you're right on the mark with your comment.

He was wondering if most slashdot readers are really so ignorant that they don't know where the word Beowulf comes from.
The answer of course is a resounding yes! Despite the fact that your average slashdot reader believes himself to be far more knowledgeable than most other people the reality is that his knowledge is extreamly narrow.

Re:Sad

[Glonoinha]

Are slashdot readers that ignorant?
You're new here, aren't you?

Re:Sad

[DAldredge]

Yes.

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? I don't understand. Sorry, but my knowledge is extremely (maybe even extreamly) narrow.

Re:Sad

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently attended a clustering summit in minneapolis, and I did't think I heard the term Beowulf used even once.

Talk about a Beowulf cluster of lamers. ;)

Re:Obligatory comment

[Omestes]

imagine a beowulf cluster of bad /. beowulf cluster jokes...

Gr... I've already done one, I feel dirty...

Seriously though (and offtopic, but more intelligent), anyone ever noticed that only geeks have this bad penchant for inside jokes? BAD inside jokes. REALLY bad... etc... Why is this, are us geeks to preocupied to come up with new jokes? And the sad thing is that everyonce in awhile I still giggle at them, even if I can see the "In soviet russia, a beowulf clusters you (with hot grits and natalie portman!)" joke coming. WHY?!

I got out of my social/group psych class with a thesis on /.ers and MUDers, and still I'm as confused as ever.

I'll give it a shot...

[MrNonchalant]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster...of Beowulf clusters.

reminds me of my first cluster project...

[morcheeba]

In 1995, I put together an animation of a satellite my company was working on. I used POVray running on DOS, and wrote a little pair of programs that would hand off render-jobs to different computers. I used 16 computers (mostly P60's) lying around the office to render about 400 frames total. The whole job took about 35 hours of wall time, which was important because I had only three 1/2 days to tweak my small demo & make a final rendering.

I didn't know network programming, so all communication was through read/writing a few networked control files. One acted as a semaphore - if you had sucessfully written your computer ID to it, you could modify the main to-do-list file. One specialized computer was assigned the task of copying the finshed files onto my new 810MB laptop's hard drive; otherwise the file server didn't have enough space for all the .TGA files.

It was a fun project & I've got it included on my resume. Today it sounds kindof trivial, so I've had to explain that general-purpose clustering tools weren't available then. I guess Beouwulf beat me to it by a year (and a zillion-fold on capability), so I was wrong. Information travelled so much slower those days...

Re:reminds me of my first cluster project...

[drinkypoo]

I'm not sure when it was written, but DQS (the distributed queueing system) was around in 1996, and I don't believe it was especially new then. this document alleges that the whole clustering thing began at NASA in 1994. Apparently FSU developed DQS starting in 1992 but I don't know when the first release was.

I used to work for a company called silicon engineering in scotts valley, ca - formerly sequoia semiconductor and last I heard they were part of creative labs called creative silicon or something. We used DQS to schedule jobs for IC simulation for testing.

Of course, DQS doesn't work on DOS, it's a Unix-type program. For anything that can be batched (like rendering frames in POVray) it can be amazingly slick and it takes relatively little configuration. It has a keen little program that watches when your system is idle and signals the queue master to feed it jobs, which is an X client. Using DQS and the berkeley automounter it was possible to easily submit jobs and not care where they ran, for instance we had the paths set up such that the same commands worked on SunOS4 and SunOS5 so verilog was always in the same place, et cetera.

DQS also has a parallel make utility, which I never used, because I hardly ever compiled anything. :)

Re:reminds me of my first cluster project...

[Anonymous Coward]

And actually, clusters running the NewTek Lightwave "ScreamerNet" software (though we called them "render farms" in those days) were developed in 1993 and publically announced in 1994.

Note also that the below refers to "Screamer" software - this was an amiga-only clustering solution which pre-dated ScreamerNet by a year!

Hopefully this post will go some way towards explaining the typical rage ex-amiga serious users (not gamers, who tend to think Amiga==A500) exhibit - we were doing all manner of Cool Stuff, then business decisions (like CEOs absconding to Bermuda) squandered our huge technological lead then killed our platform. The lesson of the story is never invest time in a proprietary platform - most ex-amiga people with sense are on linux now (those without sense are busily repeating their mistakes on Mac OS X).

NewTek, Inc. announces ScreamerNet

Las Vegas, March 20, 1994 - NewTek, Inc., the company that brought
professional video and animation production to the masses with the Video
Toaster introduces ScreamerNet for LightWave 3D users.

ScreamerNet is the evolution of the Screamer rendering hardware
announced last August. "As we pursued development of the Screamer
hardware it became evident that high speed processors were quickly
becoming commodity items." said NewTek President Tim Jenison. "Rather
than NewTek trying to keep up with the hardware wars we decided to release
software that will allow LightWave users to select the rendering machine
of their choice."

ScreamerNet is a rendering software package that allows LightWave 3D users
to take advantage of the rendering power offered by workstations from a
variety of vendors. The software is Windows NT compatible and will support
hardware that utilizes Intel, MIPS and DEC Alpha processor chips.
ScreamerNet's suggested retail price is $1995 and will support up to eight
machines.

"LightWave 3D has become the animation package of choice for most of the
cutting edge action shows in Hollywood," stated Jenison. "Television
programs such as seaQuest DSV, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Babylon 5
and RoboCop are using the Video Toaster and LightWave 3D to push the
envelope of visual effects. With the introduction of ScreamerNet they
will have access to the rendering power they need to completely redefine
the standards for effects in television and film production."

"As the makers of revolutionary products like Video Toaster and the new
Video Toaster Flyer, NewTek means high technology at an unbelievably low
price point," said NewTek's Marketing Director Donetta Colboch. "While
ScreamerNet represents a dramatic breakthrough in 3D rendering
price/performance, it's designed and priced for the professional
animation facility."

NewTek will be showcasing the ScreamerNet software at the National
Association of Broadcasters Convention, March 21-24 in Booth #11050.

Re:reminds me of my first cluster project...

[tverbeek]

this document [216.239.41.104] alleges that the whole clustering thing began at NASA in 1994.

They must be talking about Beowulf in specific; clustering in general definitely goes back further than that. For example, I know that DEC was clustering Vaxen back in the 1980's. (I remember hearing in those days that CompuServe operated on a Vax cluster.)

in soviet russia...

[circletimessquare]

the cliche is the story!

Re:Imagine

[SiMac]

I don't think we have to do no imagining anymore.

Beowulf - the name

[NotAJock]

Just because I'm an English (the language) geek, here's the lowdown on the name 'Beowulf':

The Beowulf poem is the oldest known epic in the Anglo-Saxon language (that's like, early english). It's about the life of a king of the "Geats" called Beowulf. It starts off as him as a young rash figher and follows through to his death after fighting a dragon.

Damn great story - there's probably loads of online texts (like this one?). The only surviving manuscript (possibly the only one ever written) is in the British Library. You can go there and see it.

Re:Beowulf - the name

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit! and i thought u were a plain ol geek with a british accent. now THAT would be cool

Re:Beowulf - the name

[Anonymous Coward]

Your a english geke, and you reed /.? Doesnt' teh reedin and ritin lvl hear make u want 2 stab out ur I's?

Re:Beowulf - the name

[meringuoid]

An English geke I am, and /. I do rede forsooth. Spelynge is not thy strength, nor ys thyn gramyre of the fynest; yet it is for the tales of hackerye that I remayneth, and ye troles I do endure willynglye.

Re:Beowulf - the name

[SpooForBrains]

Is it tragic that I know about the origins of Beowolf from Star Trek: Voyager?

Re:Beowulf - the name

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's interesting that you say you're interested in the English language and yet your post says almost nothing about the language itself, only literature.

As for the language itself, I once read a very comprehensive analysis of some of the Anglo-Saxon and older Germanic language in Beowulf, its effect on the story, and details of the story that get lost in modern translation. It also talked about some of the Anglo-Saxon words and how they relate to today's English. Some of them had interesting stories, and many of them, I would not have guessed.

Re:Beowulf - the name

[sad_]

Also a lot of references/influences from beowulf can be found in the lord of the rings.

Re:Beowulf - the name

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Slashdot's mother; there's plenty of info on the web for interested enough to find out. What I was trying to do is give those who know what the 'cluster' is an brief idea of where the name originated. I supposed (correctly I think) that only a few would have any idea.

Re:Imagine

[Saint Stephen]

Imagine a beowulf cluster imagining a beowulf cluster of beowulf cluster jokes!.

LO, praise of the prowess of moderators of troll..

[j1m 5n0w]

LO, praise of the prowess of moderators of troll-armed Slashdotters, in days long sped, we have heard, and what honor the NASA reasearchers won!

Just think...

[Beek]

Once this article gets duped a few times, we'll have a Beowulf cluster of stories.

What's the biggest beowulf cluster?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who has the biggest cluster?

Re:What's the biggest beowulf cluster?

[Glonoinha]

I think the building full of Apple G5s at Virginia Tech is a likely candidate.

Alternate Source for name "Beowulf"

[Nova Express]

I am given to understand that the name came not firsthand from the epic poem, but second-hand via Niven, Pournelle & Barnes' SF novel The Legacy of Hereot. In it were some big, nasty monsters they dubbed "grendels," which they then proceeded to wipe, only to find out that the adult form was what was keeping the numbers of the immature form under control, resulting in a massed attacked by thousands of "baby grendels." I remember reading that this was what inspired the Beowulf name in a FAQ several years ago. Anyone know if it's true?

Re:Alternate Source for name "Beowulf"

[meringuoid]

In it were some big, nasty monsters they dubbed "grendels," which they then proceeded to wipe, only to find out that the adult form was what was keeping the numbers of the immature form under control, resulting in a massed attacked by thousands of "baby grendels."

For anyone who doesn't know the original story, this is pleasingly ironic. Beowulf defeated the monster Grendel, ripped its arm off and hung it up as a trophy. Grendel goes home and dies of his injuries, and his mother promptly goes off to hunt down whoever did this to her dear boy...

a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf clusters redunancy

[Anonymous Coward]

see subject

Re:Imagine

[penguinoid]

Someone had a sig about Grendel clusters being better than Beowulf clusters... If he is here, I would now like to tell him, "Yes, but imagine a Beowulf cluster of Grendel clusters"

"Joke" posts

[Anonymous Coward]

That's it. Every one of you boneheads is now my enemy.

Ok...huh?

[buffy]

Quirk writes "Wired News has a blurb celebrating the 10th birthday of the Beowulf cluster. Attendees recalled the initial fear and loathing the Beowulf project had to overcome. The Beowulf project takes its name from an epic poem penned circa 1000 A.D."

Attendees of what, exactly? The blurb? I've never attended a blurb. Can you build a beowulf of them?? Sigh. -buf

Re:Ok...huh?

[Beolach]

The /. summary is just a summary. It makes more sense if you RTFA.

. . . attendees at a party held Wednesday night in San Francisco to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of Beowulf and to unveil the newly redesigned Beowulf project website.

Re:Ok...huh?

[buffy]

No shit, Sherlock. However, proper english is helpful in making a somewhat useful summary don't you think?

-buf

And 5 1/2 years of jokes

[veg_all]

A quick and sloppy google suggests that this is the first "imagine a..." comment (bottom of the page), though it's possible that the joke predates google search capability since Beowolf clusters and slashdot are both older than google. Still, the fact that it's not used as a joke, and the fact that it got a 1 rating (while, inexplicably, all those repeat jokes get modded to the stratosphere these days) lends an air of authenticity to the claim, lacadasical though the research may be.

Re:And 5 1/2 years of jokes

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! I haven't seen anything by John Kozan in YEARS! I wonder what ever happened to that old fruit.

Re:And 5 1/2 years of jokes

[the pickle]

More to the point, this comment seems to be the one, from February of 1999.

Where were *you* on 25 February 1999?

p

Re:And 5 1/2 years of jokes

[FleaPlus]

> Still, the fact that it's not used as a joke, and the fact that it got a 1 rating (while, inexplicably, all those repeat jokes get modded to the stratosphere these days) lends an air of authenticity to the claim, lacadasical though the research may be.

Actually, it's likely that comment was probably posted before the rating system came about, seeing as all the other comments on the story are also Score 1.

Re:And 5 1/2 years of jokes

[zerblat]

This one was posted in January 1999. Note that the replies are mostly along the line "Dude, that makes no sense", rather than "Enough already with all these stupid Beowulf comments!"

Where were *you* on 25 February 1999?

Why, right here, reading Slashdot! It's so sad.

Beowulf

[Mahtan]

Beowulf was a poem Tolkien really liked. A lotta the Rohirrim are based off of it.

Re:Beowulf

[Anonymous Coward]

How much of the Niebelung ring opera is based on beowulf?

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine that.

Re:If I was going to post a LINUX STORY...

[templest]

Imagine all the beowulf clusters running linux out there, now imagine the beowulf cluster of lawyers you'd need to get all those shut down. No company could afford a small army of lawyers like that, that's suicidal, that's like... making a beowulf cluster of a million Apple RAID servers, good way to go bankrupt. :P

Imagine a beowulf cluster of all the computers of people that read slashdot everyday, damn, you could hack the planet with that thing in 0.832595 seconds.

Ok, well, that's nice BUT

[Anonymous Coward]

...does anyone even still USE these any more; what with the low cost of high-end software and developments in SMP technology; aren't clusters very much out of date?

Re:Ok, well, that's nice BUT

[System.out.println()]

...does anyone even still USE these any more?

Sure. The /. mods have to use Beowulf clusters in order to have enough power to mod all the Beowulf Cluster jokes down.

Re:Ok, well, that's nice BUT

[Coelacanth]

Yes, clusters are used. My company has at least two clusters, using Linux and MacOS X systems, and is doing other research into cluster and grid computing.

Why, you ask? Because there are plenty of interesting scientific and engineering problems that require incredible amounts of computation. If the problem can be parallelized, by running on dozens of processors you can bring runtimes down to the useful range (e.g., hours instead of weeks). I don't care how big a single box you buy, some problems are still limited by the number and speed of CPUs, and the only currently-available way to beat that is with a cluster.

I tried...

[Nyder]

I tried to search out the first time someone said "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of ..." (actually I left out the of ... when I did the search). but I can only do 30 answers at a time, and since the information I want is going to be at the last page. I am not going to sit here and keep hitting next 30 until I get there. Sorry, I'm playing ZangbandTK, or Planescape: Torment. None, of the repetitious clicking for me.

hmm, haven't played Diablo 2 in awhile...

Re:I tried...

[Anonymous Coward]

Urm, you know you can just click the last "o" in Goooogle?

Someone might be able to answer this....

[chris_eineke]

What do you call a Beowulf cluster of Beowulf clusters?

A metawulf? A beocluster? A metacluster? A metabeowulfcluster? Or something different?

(p.s. this is /not/ a troll...)

Imagine a Beowulf cluster ... in Japan

[Russ Nelson]

No apology.
-russ

Re:Imagine a Beowulf cluster ... in Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

You swing and you miss!

Happy Birthday

[simontek2]

Happy Birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday Beowolf Cluster!

Re:TRUTH

[Anonymous Coward]

don't click on the link. dude, it's fucking 10pm. that link is supposed to be reserved for a person in a cubicle or maybe in a lab, so someone else will here it. YOU SUCK.

epic versus clustering

[danny]

The top result on a Google search for "beowulf" is about clustering, but 8 of the top 10 are about the epic. And I doubt there'll ever be nearly as many books and articles written about the clustering system as about the poem.

Danny.

The Year?

[swingerman]

"...name from an epic poem penned circa 1000 A.D."

That should be A.D. 1000. A.D. means "Anno Domini", Latin for "in the year of Our Lord", and should properly *precede* the year. B.C., on the other hand means "Before Christ" and properly *follows* the year.

Re:The Year?

[Elledan]

I quote:

"AD - abbrev. - Anno Domini (placed after a date, indicating that it comes the specified number of years after the traditional date of Christ's birth).
ORIGIN L. 'in the year of the Lord'."
(source: Oxford Dictionary, Tenth Edition; emphasis added)

BC is also placed after a date.

Re:The Year?

[mindriot]

Well yeah, but can you honestly ignore this historic document?

In A.D. 2101 War was beginning.

If Zero Wing says it, it must be true...

Re:The Year?

[tverbeek]

Yeah, well my centuries of standard usage can beat up your dictionary. :P It looks like poor proofreading at Oxford, because I'm sure they know better. Check any other lexicon and they'll specify that "A.D." ordinarily goes before the number. Go look at the inscriptions on some cornerstones, or some ancient manuscripts, and you'll see this confirmed.

"Anno Domini 2004" ("in the Year of the Lord 2004") tells you that we're talking about the 2004th year of Jesus' Lordship. "2004 in the Year of the Lord" is syntactically nonsensical (at best it would refer to 2004 of something in the Year of Jesus' birth).

The only reason the likes of "2004 A.D." has crept into common usage is because people are more accustomed to the likes of "399 B.C." (which reads sensically if you spell it out as "Before Christ"). Since people generally don't know what exactly it stands for and how to read it, they assume it also goes after the year. It does not.

Re:The Year?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... I always thought AD stood for "ano dominico", or, "Dominican anus".

Re:The Year?

[Elledan]

"While it is increasingly common to place AD after a date, by analogy to the use of BC, formal English usage adheres to the traditional practice of placing the abbreviation before the year, as in Latin (e.g., 5 BC, but AD 3)."
(Source: Wikipedia)

There's a reason why the Oxford Dictionary calls itself "the foremost authority on current English" :)

No idea why the formal usage of AD wasn't included, though.

Re:The Year?

[bbtom]

Or you could fuck all that and use BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). Damn theists messin' with our calendaring.

Or you could use BUE (Before Unix Era) and UE (Unix Era) - basing it on Jan 1 1970 (the Unix epoch).

Imagine a....

[ErichTheWebGuy]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of people telling you to RTFA!

Seriously though, the linked article goes into a lot of detail about what a beowulf cluster is.

Re:Imagine a....

[HalliS]

You can also wait for the movie (Beowulf & Grendel) to come out ;)

Filming begins this month actually.

Wow

[Pan T. Hose]

I just imagined it...

Re:Damn...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doubtless she's off cookin' up some grits.

Imagine

[Waffle Iron]

Imagine there's a cluster
Of 64 G5s
Or 128 Opterons
Between them only CAT5
Imagine all the boxen
Benching Quake FPS...

Imagine no shared memory
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to spinlock or thrash for
No cache coherence too
Imagine all the boxen
Crunching local tasks...

Imagine there's no mainframes
I wonder if you can
No need for Crays or S/390s
A cluster loosely bound
Imagine all the boxen
Sharing all the LAN...

You may say that I'm a uniprocessor
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And we'll simulate nukes as one

Cheap supercomputing and blade servers.

[MtViewGuy]

That's what the Beowulf project has created (besides way too many /. jokes =) ).

Imagine clustering hundreds to thousands of identical computers together to do heavy-duty computational work at a cost far below that of a dedicated supercomputer--that's what Beowulf clustering has made possible. Why do you think a lot of biotech companies are using large-scale Beowulf cluster setups to do DNA simulation?

Also, it has created a market for rack-mounted small server machines called blade servers where you can put hundreds to thousands of them in a relatively small space, all synched together using Beowulf clustering code.

Re:Cheap supercomputing and blade servers.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice, but it's hardly supercomputing.. Sure it's powerful, and a lot cheaper, but super computers will blow away clusters everytime. Super fast interconnects, real shared memory, single image systems, specialized parallel processors, etc... Clusters don't compare. And before you start quoting the top 500 do some research on linpack. It is not a realistic benchmark. These days the top500 is politically important, but not a realistic measurement of computing power.

contemporary epic poem

[Anonymous Coward]

El Cid

Check it out, yo.

http://www.legends.dm.net/paladins/cid.html
htt p://www.google.com/search?q=el+cid+campeador

Question

[ErikZ]

One thing that the article mentions, but doesn't get into. That scientists were hostile to the concept at first.

Can anyone who was around at the time shed some light on this?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to know Dr. Sterling, I worked with him at CACR/Caltech. To answer your question, from what I heard and so on:

1. commodity hardware had some serious problems back then compared to today (so did big iron but that was always hush-hush and part of the mystique of running on big iron), and the software was a lot rougher, did less compared to the commercial Unixes, etc.

2. Running on big iron was, well, not only accepted, but sexy, it was the thing to do. to be able to say you are running your code on the new super fast SGI, Intel or IBM is much more uber (at the time anyway) than to say yeah we ran it on a bunch of desktop PCs in a cluster. Took awhile for the non-computer tinkerer scientists to accept the whole thing.

3. Even today, some jobs run better on a shared memory big iron machine than parallelized out on a
cluster using message passing. That was true then, also.

4. Scientists don't always think of a very scalable (i.e. increasingly faster potentially) thing like a cluster as good. Gone are the days where you can start a run and disappear to go mountain climbing or sailing for two weeks. At best a long simulation (or portion thereof) buys you a long weekend. The faster the number-crunching goes the more work you have to do, the more results are expected faster, etc, etc. A vicious circle really. If this concept shocks you, pretend grants, academia and all of it has no politics, only wonderful breakneck pursuit of fact and conquering new horizons...

That's just my take. Oh yeah, and highly unlikely to get funding or donations back then from the big companies of equipment to build a cheap alternative to their flagship HPC products... They didn't exactly encourage that sort of thing.

Re:Question

[fitten]

There were other issues as well... These are some of the ones I saw where I was (I worked on clustering as well back then, we just got beaten to the published paper by them so they got the name). Here are some of the issues, in no particular order.

- many of the engineering and science centers were already very deep into the Unix workstation vendors and were used to the service, stability, and performance of the Unix boxes - Sun, SGI, HP, etc. Many of them didn't want PCs to come into the system because they would require lots of support (at the time back then, PCs were notorious for being maintenance issues with only one or two boxes, much less potentially 100s).

- 32-bit. Many codes ran on machines and expected large memory models (yes, even in distributed codes). The codes would have to be tweaked a bit to run in the smaller memory footprints.

- Performance in floating point. Back then, PCs weren't as fast as the Unix boxes. It wasn't until the PPro when the performance gap started closing/inverting. You could use 10 Suns or 20 PCs to get the performance. Of course, back to the logistics/support problem of any PC, much less 2X as many.

- Viable OSs. In 1995, Linux was still fairly fledgling. It worked, but there were lots of holes (feature holes and such). The only other alternative was to run a Windows variant. Neither really worked that well at the time. GCC on the x86 back then was pretty nasty too. On the same hardware in compute intensive code, we regularly saw 2X the performance on codes we compiled when running Windows with MSVC compared to the same hardware running Linux or Solaris (because of gcc).

- Reuse. Many centers used research money to buy new machines, which would then fold back into the infrastructure of the place when the research contract was over. As I mentioned before, they were already deep into the Unix workstations. Having a research project buying a bunch of PCs wouldn't eventually really improve the Unix workstations that they have in the place.

Bravo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dang, where are the mod points when I need them...

OK

[symbolset]

All your beowulf cluster are belong to us.

Imagine...

[scoser]

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Slashdot mirrors that could prevent 503s...

So what do we do in another two years?

[Stephen Samuel]

When the beowulf clust hits it's 100th anniversary?

I'm kinda off-base here, aren't?

Could you imagine a beowolf cluster of those?

[Anonymous Coward]

It had to be said eventually

Beowulf in L33t/aolspeak..

[actor_au]

I would like to apologise first off for creating this monster.
I did it out of boredom more than anything else a long time back..

Its only the first three verses' however, I wasn't insane enough to do the whole thing.

D00d u no Cl4n Danish?
Cpl 98, 99
Th3y b l33t
[danish]Shield < [danish]sheaf
pwnd in Q3 & C$
Romero was like "D00d??! WTF?"
Bcase he w4z working solo.
He wez top of teh ladder
and teh Chatroom was like
"D00d??! WTF?"
He pwnz

[danish]shield N3\/\/ a n00b
T0ok nOOb to clan danish
n00b was fr0n CowboyNeil
k3pt the Cl4n as 1
M4de them > l33t
[danish]grain w4a his 'nic
He was l33t.
in the CPL
4ll n00bs shuld l34rn
Spread the lewt
when u are a noob
so wh3n ur 19
teh clan wi1l still restecpt U
wh3n j00 at w4r
a man is l33t
if he is k00l
on any of teh servers(xsept teh telstra 1s)

[danish]shield was pwnd after his 19th
w3nt to uni stoned but still with l33t
teh clan danish gave him pr0n
which was sw33t
1n his gargae sat
a l33t machin3
old-school but built 4 teh road
There [danish]shield slept
next 2 teh handbrake
surrounded by teh pr0n
russ4n, german and teh japanes
teh Cl4n watched teh car leave
a shitbox it was
filled with the lewt
and teh goatse mails and gifs
4 teh long wait till uni
he was without a gfx card
he w4s liek a n00b
wh3n he left teh clan
A l4mer n00b
teh clan put a bumper sticker on his c4r
Goatse it procle.. proclaine... said.
teh clan l3t him le4ve
a|\|D 3 teh uni he went
teh most l33t in teh clan
don't no what uni is liek

I feel unclean now.

more anniversaries

[Anonymous Coward]

great! Now i wait for the Soviet Russian anniversary.

OT - Reply to The Angry Economist

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/~Morosoph/journal/79657/

Why?

[Pan T. Hose]

Just because I'm an English (the language) geek, here's the lowdown on the name 'Beowulf': The Beowulf poem is the oldest known epic in the Anglo-Saxon language (that's like, early english). It's about the life of a king of the "Geats" called Beowulf. It starts off as him as a young rash figher and follows through to his death after fighting a dragon.

Why am I not surprised that you somehow managed to include "Geatse" reference in your Beowulf cluster of those explanation? Don't even get me started on the obvious connection of "oldest times" to cosmology and all that "big bang black hole" stuff.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why am I not surprised that you somehow managed to include "Geatse" reference in your Beowulf cluster of those explanation?

You are thinking of goatse, but that is different

Best Beowulf plot summary

[panurge]

Possibly the best summary of the plot of Beowulf is to be found in Terry Pratchett's Guards!Guards!

In fact, I like it so much I am going to plead fair use and extract it.

"Monsters are getting more uppity, too...I heard where there was this guy, he killed this monster in this lake, no problem, stuck its arm up over the door-"
"Pour encourjay lays ortras," said one of the listeners.
"Right, and you know what? Its mum come and complained. It's actual mum come right down to the hall next day and complained. Actually complained That's the respect you get."

Of course not

[panurge]

Writing begets writing. Every literary flea has literary fleas on its back (did Pope say that?). But computer science begets computers. Stuff that really works doesn't need a mountain of commentary, though it could probably benefit from a decent manual.

Re:LO, praise of the prowess of moderators of trol

[panurge]

I've posted, so I can't mod you up. Good effort, though.

I thought he said "King of the Geeks"

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that would be fitting for this forum

Re:Imagine

[mlush]

Terriffic! and whats more impressive (at least according to Google) original!!! when I next have mod points I'll track down one of your posts and mod it up!.

Wow

[Dachannien]

Attendees recalled the initial fear and loathing the Beowulf project had to overcome.

And now, "Beowulf" is a term synonymous with the most downmodded /. joke of all time.

You've come a long way, baby.

Re:In the words of comic book guy

[CyberDruid]

Best.. Beowulf Joke... Ever!
You, sir, have revitalized a dying art!

Non conventional cluster

[MarcoPon]

So, can this qualify as a valid Eggs Makers Beowulf cluster ?

Bye!

OpenMosix?

[TeknoHog]

Given the development of kernel-level clustering such as OpenMosix, is there any point in implementing a 'traditional' Beowulf any more?

GOOGLEFIGHT!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

(Posting as AC to not blow moderations done in this forum)

This is EXACTLY what GoogleFight was made for!

I entered the two topics:

Beowulf Cluster vs. Beowulf Poem

And The Results (A Drum Roll, Please)...

Cluster Wins! They show 135,000 articles vs. 92,600 for the poem.

And it is SCO too!

[Glowing Fish]

So SCO is responsible for the first "imagine a Beowulf cluster..." joke, too.

I wonder if they are going to claim it as their IP, and sue thousands of /. posters?

Imagine..

[Anonymous Coward]

A Beowulf cluster of supercomputers... aha .. imagine that!!

it takes maturity

[kyle_b_gorman]

well, think of it this way...how old is your average slashdot reader (try 14), and do you think they can handle epic poetry?

Re:Imagine

[tverbeek]

Someone had a sig about Grendel clusters being better than Beowulf clusters...

Yeah, but it's a Grendel's Mother cluster that I'd be more afraid of. And as everyone knows, a Dragon cluster will whup a Beowulf cluster's butt.

Time to change the topic obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess we should make a joke or go off on a tangent about any topic OTHER than beowulf clusters on this thread?

grits?

[khold]

Seeing all rhese Beowulf cluster jokes reminds me: what ever happened to the "hot grits" cliche?

eh...

[foreverdisillusioned]

Properly, we should use C.E. and B.C.E. because 1. The majority of people on this planet do not consider Jesus Christ to be their lord and 2. It's rather doubtful as to whether he was actually born in the year 1 A.D. in the first place.

But let's be realistic, people never pay attention to pedantic nitpicks like these.

SCO & cluster

[Anonymous Coward]

No one has mentioned that SCO has announced a new line of Grendel's mothers legal clusters which can file complaints about linux clusters in massively parallel fashion?

I can't imagine ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot without Beowulf cluster references.

Bonus points for being a Traveller geek?

[Conspir8or]

I encountered "Beowulf" the poem first, but this is what comes to mind when the Beowulf cluster comments start flying:

This is Free Trader Beowulf,
calling anyone . . .
Mayday, Mayday . . . we are under attack . . .
main drive is gone . . .
turret number one not responding . . .
Mayday . . . losing cabin pressure fast . . .
calling anyone . . . please help . . .
This is Free Trader Beowulf . . .
Mayday . . .

Conspir8or

Sounds better than:

[einhverfr]

Imagine a Grendel Cluster of these.

Or Imagine a Mother of Grendel cluster of these....

Beowulf jokes...

[Anonymous Coward]

For some strange reason I imagined a cluster of Beowulf jokes on this topic...

For some strange reason I was right...

Re:Imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Had you written 'Imagine a beowulf cluster of my feet in your ass.', you wouldn't have been modded offtopic :P

Re:I wonder why...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why Slashdork never talks about groklaw anymore? Could it be because Groklaw is now Selling Linux Insurance and telling people Linux violates hundreds of patents?

Why? Imagine a Groklaw cluster of Linux Insurances? No, no, sounds all wrong...BEOWULF!!!

YaY

[Osinoche]

The Beowulf clusters of NeoGeo 4 Ds are cooler than ever. --- Osi -- Nonsense, makes no sense.

Re:Obligatory comment

[bbtom]

Don't you mean:

1. In Soviet Russia, a Beowulf clusters you with hot grits, Darl McBride and Natalie Portman!
2. All your base are belong to us! You are on the way to destruction! You have no chance to survive! Make your time!
3. ???
4. PROFIT!!!

Now, with that done, Slashdot can move on and start posting new jokes. As long as "yo momma" jokes aren't part of that, I'll sleep comfortably at night.

Re:Obligatory comment

[Omestes]

all yo' momma are belong to us
with natalie portman and hot grits...

in soviet russia all of us are belong to yo' momma!

I'm really quite done.
really.