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iMac Beowulf Cluster Comes to Life
AmigaAvenger writes "Finally a good use for all those old IMacs that many organizations have laying around collecting dust. We have set up a 5 node (4+1 controller) iMac beowulf cluster, which is appropriately named Skittles, and is running PPC Yellowdog Linux, with MPICH 1.2.6 cluster message passing software."
I was thinking the same thing... in addition to, why is this on Slashdot?
I'll just have to remember the next time I make something that gives me the King of Nerds feeling, I should submit the project details to Slashdot.
Get paid to code OSS
Why would I give my systems away when I can find amusement with them?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
It would be cool to build that as a pop art structure and actually form it into the shape of a flower.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Perhaps they will; I doubt that this cluster is powerful enough, or long-term-interesting enough to keep around for any real length of time. I mean, they used a mere 10-megabit hub, for cryin' out loud, on machines that have 100-megabit interfaces. It's obvious that they're just toying around with this. Afterward, a charitible contribution would be a nice little tax deduction.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
The power draw would be a problem too. I used to have an iMac DV, and even with the screen in "energy-save" mode, there was still a bit of power being drawn by the tube and accompanying electronics.
The best old Mac for clustering would be, IMHO, the Gigabit Ethernet G4. They must be fairly cheap by now, have Gigabit Ethernet (duh), take two gigabytes of RAM, and are easily processor-upgradeable if desired (G4 upgrades are getting cheap).
We apologize for the inconvenience.
I don't believe that's necessarily true. I'm sixteen years old, and when I was four we bought our first computer: a blazing-fast 16Mhz 68k Macintosh Classic II, with a massive 2Mb RAM and an 80Mb hard disk. Remember, I was four at the time.
:-)
Now, by the time I was actually capable of using it independently, at around age eight, it was already obsolete (damn you, 604e!). By the time it died, we had owned it for no less than nine years, running pretty well constantly whenever we were home, passively cooled in the Australian summer.
We then got out first 'new' computer more than a year afterwards, when my brother dumped his old iMac G3 500 on us. Its what I'm typing on now, and is currently at least six years old (manufactured in November 1999). I also own two other iMac G3s - a 266 and a 350 - and I've never come to believe that "if I touch this, it'll CATCH FIRE AND BURN MY FAMILY", despite the fact that almost all the hardware I've ever used has had one foot in the grave. Indeed, my school's just bought another 500 Dells, and I ph34r not!
I would suggest that your kids would be more likely to fear old hardware if you *make* them fear it - say, beating them if they accidentally break it, or even just punishing them verbally. If you tell them it was going to break anyway, and help them work out how to fix it, it can only benefit them in the future.
--- Egads, I glow in the dark!