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Linux Clustering
An anonymous reader writes "Beowulf clustering turns 10 years old, and, in this interview, creator Donald Becker talks about how Beowulf can handle high-end computing on a par with supercomputers."
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i dont mean to sound like a troll or anything, but is this really news. over the last year or so, (nearly) all of the articles on /. about fast computers have been clusters.
The more complex a problem gets, the more likely you need one supercomputer as opposed to a cluster.
I'm not sure it is that simple. For some problems (e.g. Monte Carlo simulations), a more complex problem means more individual nodes are required, with very little inter-node communication. For other kinds of problem (finite element methods, maybe?), you're probably right.
In other words, the physical structure of the solution depends on the kinds of algorithms that you intend to run: there's not just one `correct' answer.
Since I administer a fairly large cluster, I can say that the answer is "It depends" (Of course that is ALWAYS the answer!). It depends on the codes being run, it depends upon the interconnect optimization.(yes myrinet is fast, but the real key is that it has much lower latency and this has to be engineered carefully if using more than one switch) My cluster runs both myrinet and Gig/E, some codes run well on the the ethernet interfaces (take codes like mpiblast for instance) while others (NAMD comes to mind) run faster on the myrinet. However this machine may be fast, but I have some large SMP boxes (IBM P-series) that cycle for cycle SMOKE the performance of the x86 boxes. But you have to remember that the cluster computers cost about $3000 /node while the SMP boxes with a similar config cost about $13,000 apiece, and even more if you want a box that supports more than 8 CPUs (think 1 million and up)
So once again, it comes down to the types of jobs, and how much you are willing to pay to get those jobs done in a hurry! A Cluster is still great, I have just completed some jobs that consumed over 12 years of CPU time, in 1 week of wall-clock time!
*narf!*