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NSF awards $500,000 grant for Beowulf Cluster
ragnar! writes "National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $500,000 to support a new parallel computing facility for Bartol. The "major research infrastructure" (MRI) grant will support a parallel system based on 100 linked processors, each of which will run at speeds up to 600 megahertz, connected by fast Ethernet hardware - very similar to the Avalon-Beowulf Cluster, developed by the Los Alamos Center for Nonlinear Studies and Goddard Space Flight Center. "
MRI grants can't include personnel money or electricity.
I suppose I knew it would be risky making a comment like this on a thread that actually _was_ about beowulf clustering. Just to clarify things, I intended it to be humorous - hence the part about gaining back my lost respect via first post :)
-Denor
Probably slashdot has a script that automatically marks the first post -1 offtopic. ;)
You have to take into account the normal government bureaucracy bullshit, so it will come out to about 2 to 3x of whatever is a fair and reasonable price.
I imagine a BSD variant would be best - still open source, but the TCP/IP stack is faster, so you'd probably lose less in inter-processor communication.
If you're running a private gigabit-class network (GigE, Myrinet, Giganet, etc.) and have a separate control network (typically Fast Ethernet), there's no reason to run TCP/IP over the high-speed network. In tht case, you could bypass the TCP/IP stack entirely and have the message passing system (typically an MPI implementation) talk directly to the hardware -- the "user space"/"OS bypass" approach. This is what Myricom's GM and the various VIA implementations let you do. Most of the larger Beowulf cluster installations are going with something like this.
I must admit that I find it very surprising that they're going to the trouble of buying fast DEC Alphas and then connecting them with something as pokey as Fast Ethernet. I hope their RMHD and other calculations are pretty close to embarassingly parallel (i.e. almost no IPC), or the network will definitely end up being a performance bottleneck.
"My life's work has been to prompt others... and be forgotten." --Cyrano de Bergerac
the story is here
Self improvement is masturbation
Who is it who has so many moderator points that they can afford to moderate up useless posts such as the above? I believe Slashdot has been hacked and someone is wrecking moderation havoc.
That's true, but if you want to be a Karma whore, like people here seem to be accusing each other of, it won't do you much good, since you can't get Karma by having an AC post moderated up.
But who needs Karma whores anyhow? The only difference it makes is when you get over the +2 threshold, and then it doesn't matter.
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
If you want to check out more, check out http://www.capsl.udel.edu. The information on the web page isn't too organized, and all the info on the EARTH page is bound to be pretty old, but you might be able to get a decent idea.
Seems to me she's holding her panties -- therefore she knew damn well her beaver would be showing. And therefore, she's not as stupid as you think she is. :) She wanted it to happen, it did...and now she's practically famous.
I'm currently a grad student at UD (in Mechanical Engineering, not Physics) and am really stoked that I might be able to run code on this system if I can talk to the right people.
I also work at one of the top composites research centers in the world (also at UD). It takes in $5 million a year, but in the end only between 8-10% gets spent on actual material and equipment. My boss has over $1 million in grants himself, but I still get a kick out of how much of our equipment is still held together with duct tape. A grant that large will be nibbled away to fix problems the physics department or research group has and any fix will cost at least a thousand bucks because it probably won't be something that can come off the shelf. I know my school, it will happen that way.
When all is said and done $500,000 over 3 years ain't that much really, especially since what defines necessary hardware can be kind of shaky. Also you have to consider that about 10% of the money research groups spend on equpiment gets siphoned off the back end by the UD purchasing department.
Incidentally personnel means grad students who don't get benefits and get paid a pittance. Thats probably what the other 20% of mathcing funds will pay for.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Does that really look like the kind of crowd that would tolerate women removing their panties, carrying them around and participating in limbo? It looks more like a bandanna to me, but if it is panties, my best guess is she was so drunk she didn't know her panties were in her hand instead of protecting the privacy of her slashbox.
I doubt that they are building this thing out of e-machines, or packard smells, or shitty local store clones. As a rule of thumb, you can figure on a bare minimum of $5000 per system for a low-end PC server, like a Compaq Proliant 1600, or any other 1st Tier rackmount PC. Add a gig of ram, a nice raid controller, some hot swap scsi drives, and a dlt tape drive and you've easily blown $20k.
Thanks for bringing the Limbo Lady back to virtual-life. I knew that tight-assed, "family-friendly", advertisement-heavy GeoCities wouldn't stand for it for more than one weekend. What do I think of her act? Brilliant. She's a modern-day Lady Godiva. She turned a simple geek-party at a tech firm into one for the ages. As for the Beaver, I'd like to take a page from Frank Drebin's playbook, and have it stuffed. Laterness... The Bird
Ok, I've seen her photo before at poosmoke.com Now they've actually changed it somewhat since I list saw it, and removed her name, but it would appear that she sent the photo there. Ahhh well.
I don't think that's her panties she's holding. It looks more like a bandana or something.
or else she could sue the pants off the photographer! **pun intended**
Hello, young person! Tipper Gore wants to be a positive influence on your life!
Tipper Gore wants to improve the judgement of ALL young people, like the one revealed here. Keep a positive attitude and your mental health can only improve! --Tipper Gore
yummy
ah..now why do women go pantie less? Isnt it cold? Do they think they're going to get laid pretty soon, say in the janitorial closet? Or do they just go naked under a single piece of clothing for their own pleasure? Or maybe they're too hot and need a way to stay cool..
dont get me wrong, I LIKE the fact that women go undiless..I just wish I knew when.
Which Linux operating system tends to get used for clusterware? Is it a customer version, or off the shelf stuff, like SuSE or Slackware? Does it require a special kernel? Does it require special utilities and admin stuff?
Well, I sort of admin a Beowulf at work... it consists of 8 dual PII-450s with 512MB RAM apiece...
/usr, instead of each machine with its own /usr - or maybe not, depending on what seems to be the best way to do it).
It came pre-made, with a slightly-modified version of RH 5.2 installed - basically just an SMP kernel and some utilities and libraries. You don't really need any special software, except for PVM or MPI (we use MPI). The MPI distribution we use is LAM 6.2 - I'm sure you can hunt it down if you look around a bit (try google.com/linux).
I'm going to eventually set up another small cluster for testing and development purposes, once we get the first piece of software into operation (or maybe before, if I don't have a whole lot of stuff to do) - I'm planning on setting it up with Debian and a much more sensible layout (share
I wouldn't recommend RedHat, tho - adminning on it is not much fun. (no apt!)
who is the jackass that moderates up signal11's posts???? he must be the only one laughing at this.
/. moderation works yet? It's quite simple--make a feedback loop once you get selected to be a moderator, and moderate up your own posts. signal11 is the jackass in question.
You mean you haven't figured out how
We are a cash strapped beowulf group doing legit research (we actually made a little bit of knot (ap math) history) Everyone seems to like us and support what we are doing but no one is putting their money where their mouths are BALDRIC. We are doing this in the true spirit of beowulf.. Taking old surplus hardware from all around a university and putting it to good use .. All of the research findings must be public inorder for anyone to use it, we have a very open source attitude to the cluster.. We currently have 8 nodes up and running with 7 more waiting to get 'on the action'. But our problem is that we have *no* funding. The biggest support we've gotten is a tiny room (I'm talking 15' x 15' at the most) from our Computer Science department.
My question is: How can we get this kind of support??
I just couldn't resist wondering.... 600MHz sounds suspiciously like PIII type hardware, but $5k/CPU ?!!? I only hope they're maybe talking Alphas, which would be about right. Otherwise I have to assume that it's paying quite a few salaries. Not that that is a bad thing I guess. 10 people at $30k each to write parallel code for the thing for 1 year (or 5 people for 2 years), and the world benefits from new knowledge of parallel coding in Beowolf. That leaves $2k per CPU for HW, which is quite reasonable, since they'll want lots of memory in at least a few of the boxes, and *good* connectivity. "Does it quack?"
Very bad luck to mock the Trolls. Look what happened to Britain when the Vikings visited. Still a little rape and pillage would break the bordom.
This is not remotely funny by any reasonable defintion. Karma whore!
This is a troll, right? Because that has *GOT* to be the stupidest thing I've heard today...
6r3a7 0ñ 830Wü1F
Seriously, is this the most interesting news Malda can find? What this place needs is a new way to choose topics.
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
Eart thu se Beowulf, see the with Brecan wunne,
on sidne sae ymb sund flite,
thaer git for wlence wada cunnedone
ond for dolgilpe on deop waeter
aldrum nethdon?
... But I will ask the question anyway :-) Assuming that someone had more money than brains,
could a Beowulf cluster run an interactive application? Say, wine for instance?
I just had this vision of Windows apps actually running fast... On second thought, nahhh.
Some things are just not meant for mankind.
A dingo ate my sig...
The main result of this is that only the Government buys supercomputers, and nowadays they're mostly a boondoggle. SGI is currently trying to sell Cray, with limited success. Even Deep Blue is a cluster, made of stock CPUs on custom boards with additional custom hardware. The era of the classic supercomputer, with its huge mat of hand-wired connections, is over.
Personally I thought this was kinda funny. not the funniest, but certianly has merrit.
Anyway, off to find a good post to moderate up (I wish more people would log in, or not post AC... doubtful you'll get moderated down for a minority opinion, only a stupid one... That and people seem to make more sense when they have a name)
yeah, I dont think thats her panties either. However, I would like to see the rest of her body though, because I think she has a nice, neatly trimmed beaver,
Lam can be found at http://www.mpi.nd.edu/lam/. It was originally written at the Ohio Supercomputing Center. It is currently being maintained by the Laboratory for Scientific Computing at the University of Notre Dame. By the way, we just released version 6.3 of LAM. If you're looking for a good way to see how LAM is communicating, check out XMPI, a graphical interface to LAM (as well as SGI's MPI implimentation). LAM is available as a tarball, i386 and SRC RPMS, and should be available in the Debian Potato archives. BTW - While you're visiting the LSC's pages, don't forget to see the world famous domecam.
Well! I had no idea what I would see as I read and scrolled down, but, nice, indeed! Smell the breeze! Wonder if she felt one? Probably not, she looks comfortably numb. Woof!
You do make it seem that the moderators are a separate part of the Slashdot community. Distanced from the rest of you.
This is a myth
Anyone who posts on Slashdot with a registered username has a chance of moderation for a few days a month, the rest of the time moderators are ordinary users posting away, themselves being moderated up and down and not even knowing when their next moderation duty will arise.
I am fed up with people complaining about moderation - you are being moderatoed by your peers - a sample of the people who are reading what you are writing.
Posted anonymously 'cos I know this is offtopic...
I really think it's a fake. The lines where her thighs meet her crotch don't look right.
Definitely a re-touched photo; those of you that don't think so are just too horny to beleive it!
I think they will use MPI (Message Passing Interface) standard as everyone else, and Fortran and C/C++ and programming languages.
I want a Beowulf cluster of THESE THINGS!!
:-)
Sorry, just couldn't resist... bye-bye karma
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds
This source of funding isn't that unusual -- the University of Virginia Centurion cluster was funded by two $450,000 MRI grants.
Almost no one uses Linda -- what would you think UDel does?
Most people with systems like this use a batch queue system like PBS and message passing libraries like MPI.
Beowulf like clusters become popular, Linux is
often used, but it have to compete with the large
and good old Unix suppliers. Take a look at:
http://www.fysik.dtu.dk/CAMP/valhal.html
Here you find a similar project, and even an
explanation why they didn't choose linux.
Seems like the commercial unices are running
out of time.
After reading the article, I couldn't help but wonder what type of software they would use to keep the processing happening smoothly. Parallel processing in the large such as this is a whole area of study on it's own, I would assume they would implement some sort of process control software that would model the virtual OS Linda, but I don't see any reference in the article as to how they are handling this.
Great! Let's just hope none of them have been listening to the ACs here on slashdot or they'll try to build it out of iMacs running linux or palm pilots....
I'm sorry folks, but I'm just not creative enough to come up with a way to somehow make a beowulf cluster of these. I apologize for not being able to contribute to the obligatory beowulf cluster thread, and hope that I can earn back all of your respect by getting a first post somehow.
-Denor
I've always wondered what happens to these huge computers and labs people build for one project after the project is over. Do they auction the parts off? Do they do more research? How do they decide when it's obsolete?
Dan
So will we soon see the demise of massively paralell supercomputers as clusters of cheap machines become cheaper? Though they're technically not as efficient, because, CMIIW, the big SGI type supercomputers have their components connected via very big pipes, allowing for more data throughput...but I think the relative low cost of cluster type solutions may outweight that.
ftp.slashdot.org....or dont you have ftp ? slash 0.3pre is out.
All the biggies are SMP nowadays. Look at the Top 500 Supercomputing Sites and you'll see what I mean. As for Cray, the first Cray company was bought by SGI, and the second went out of business, even though they had GHz single CPUs in about 1994 (exact info anyone?).
I don't know exactly how the 5k is going to be used, nor do I have any idea how this instituition handles their finances... But keep in mind that a portion of this may include money for graduate researchers, and overhead (i.e. lab space)..
I know the university I'm at charges something on the order of 50% for overhead.. So if a professor is awarded a 500k grant the school sucks 50% of that money off the top for overhead. So that knocks this down to 250k.. That's still 2.5k/cpu..
But wait, now you need someone to keep the 100 machines working together.. That could be a grad student, which will cost 25-32k per student (that includes supplies and travel money).. Then use a chunk of the remainder to pay the professor during the summer months (many professors are only paid during the school year and need to use research money to cover the other 3 months)... In the end, I wouldn't be surprised if of the 500k, 150k was actually available for purchasing hardware.. So figure 1.5k/cpu rather than 5k/cpu..
Just 32 Pii-450's, a great 3com switch, and a master node. Beowulf is the way to go. BTW, with that $500000, I could make a zillion-nodes cluster ;) I just think our new cluster at CS dept. needs a name. Thinkin'
--exa--
People making coments about the amount of hardware/support that can be had for $500,00 should remember the realities of grant funding at a University in this country:
So, a $500k grant is about $250k after ICR. Then say you fund 2 peole at $35k/year to help build and run it. Now you're down to just $110k for hardware. Even with a "best case" run of the numbers and cheap people, you're still not going to have more than $150k for hardware in this grant.
Also keep in mind that this grant's funding is spread over 3 years.
100 600MHz PCs is going to run about $100k even before you start buying networking equipment, backup equipment and power supply/protection equipment.
In all likelyhood, Bartol is going to need additional funding (possibly x% matching money from the state or other similar grants) to make this a realitiy.
Just thought people should know that when you get a $500,000 grant, you don't just get a check for $500,000 to blow on hardware.
----
Life if possible, art at any cost.
I think they will use MPI (Message Passing Interface) standard as everyone else, and Fortran and C/C++ as programming languages.
WHOZ MY BITCH, JOO ARE ESP IF JOO IZ A KARMA HOEBAG
The article wasn't specific as to hardware, but since they said it was "much like the Avalon cluster" they might well be using Alphas, not Pentia. $5k/box would be a good price if they are using the newer Alpha boxes based on the 21264 chip (which is better than twice as fast, on average, than the 21164's used in Avalon, even at the same MHz).
Remember that supercomputers are expensive. They will also crush any PC based system for throughput. What is the backplane speed of a PC around 600 MB/s max!! Large mulitprocessor computers like the Sun E10000 have 64 processors with a backplane speed of over 9.0 G/s (This is processor to processor, memory to process via a switched backplane). This machine can crush any of these Beowolf clusters but the cost is in the millions. How many Universiy research groups can afford a million dollar supercomputer and the staff to run it? Do not call the supercomputers dead just because of your lack of knowledge.
With beowulfes getting ever bigger, the issue faced by administrators of these beasts are very much related to management.
By chance, some projects answer this issue, as BLD (free, Berkeley Lab) or ALINKA RAISIN (commercial) and ALINKA LCM (GPL), but there are still things to be done. Moreover, once you have overcome the software management, you still have to deal with the hardware (of these 1000 fans, one _has_ to fail...).
Still, the hardest job is not for the administrators: users have to actually write good parallel code... and this is no piece of cake.
When limbo lady chose to participate in the game without her panties, we believe that she was doing more than providing the world with a cheap thrill. Her act reveals more about what it means to be human than any number of best-selling books and thoughtful Andy Rooney essays. By exposing herself, she exposed ourself.
Please use this guestbook to let us know what you think about her act. And whether you think she has a nice beaver.
When limbo lady chose to participate in the game without her panties, we believe that she was doing more than providing the world with a cheap thrill. Her act reveals more about what it means to be human than any number of best-selling books and thoughtful Andy Rooney essays. By exposing herself, she exposed ourself.
Please use this guestbook to let us know what you think about her act. And whether you think she has a nice beaver.
I don't think the biggest beowolf cluster would help you with that problem. A shrink might though...
-+- *Trollin' Fer Jesus!* -+- ....(Hi! I'm a troll!)
@ @
U
'---'
Jesus is my copilot, and we're cruising for pussy.
What? Surely this must be a flame war attempt...
I enjoy linux, but saying that a quad xeon outperforms a cray is rediculous. Also, saying that linux outscales Solaris is a bit far fetched...
YOU'RE WRONG I TRIED IT ONCE AND IT WORKED
Is it just me? Or does spending half a million dollars on a 100-node 600MHz cluster seem high? I could have sworn that recent posts of this kind put this type of cluster in at under $200k?
slashdot.org puts the B O in beowulf hahaha
Where can I get me one of those machines? ;-)
-cf
AGAIN, THAT IS OLD SOURCE. WHERE IS THE CURRENT SOURCE. SUPPORT OPEN SOURCE!
you can't moderate in any discussion you post in. I suppose you could do that with two accounts. Just use each account to moderate up the other one. The implications are rather interesting actually...
--
grappler
Vidi, Vici, Veni
It would be interesting to know how many of these things the US government has stashed away. (I mean, since NASA originally developed the thing (Is that correct?) I'm sure other agencies with one less letter in their names were pretty interested.)
In any case, the IRS might think about using AI Beowulf clusters to check tax returns. Ha. That would be the day. (I want my refund!)
What Crypto applications might there be for a Beowulf cluster out there? Genetic algorithms for new ciphers?
Jon
-- http://www.cerastes.org
I would love to see them use Athlons, not only are they faster but I'm sure AMD would love to get in on a project like this. I can see the press releases already! AMD! AMD!
Good point. I assumed they would be using 600 MHz Athalons.
A 100-box Alpha setup would of course be much more powerful, but also much more costly; I wonder if the added expense would be better used by just buying more, but cheaper x86 machines?
Now, there are so many possibilities for people looking for power setups. We've got Athalons, G4s, Pentium IIIs, Alphas, Transmeta mystery chips, and those are just the CPU choices. I can't wait to see what will win the price/performance war once multiprocessor, multicore and cluster technology really go mainstream.
Boo!
I read one comment where Linux Beowulf clusters are cool, but can't really compete with a well built supercomputer. You can't do fluid modeling on one of these things, you don't have the memory speed. this is 100 Pentuims running at on 100 100mhz FSB....
Because any post associated with beowolf clusters is normally a troll, the moderators are having a hard time moderating this particular topic...
:)
Their first instinct is, "Oh God, it's a beowulf post - moderate down, moderate down." It must be a hard itch for them not to scratch in this case
From the article it is hard to tell exactly what this money was for. Was it a $500,000 payment for a Beowulf cluster, for Bartol to run the cluster, or for Bartol to build and run the cluster?
If they are purchasing hardware for that amount, they're getting ripped, because I'm thinking all the needed hardware, including the boxes and the networking equipment, can be had for under $150,000 (they could get a nice bulk order discount).
My figure wouldn't include costs like assembly/setup labour and the OS (heh) but half the work is opening the boxes...
Seriously, once the system is going and the scientists have their apps setup, all you need to do is make sure it doesn't overheat. (We are talking about a massive number of x86 systems, here).
Disclaimer: I really don't know what the hell I'm talking about in this post. If someone could inform us what it costs to maintain a project like this, please post.
Boo!
I take it cray-era supercomputers are a thing of the past-or are they?
Everyone knows that low-end systems are much more (sometimes 5 ro 6 times more) powerful per dollar than high end ones. Maybe "big computing" is finally starting to realize the cost effeciency involved.
I make it my business to test these different platforms out for large scale data analysis and it isn't as simple as throwing a quad speed box together. The stuff I work with would chew up any quad box in a matter of seconds. Put up a Origin 2000, Sun E10K and a beowolf cluster ( as I am now ) and the Origin 2000 still outperforms all of them. Trust me though I am not an IRIX fan by any means. LiNuX MaN don't know diddly.