Compaq Offers Free Beowulf Test Drives

waite writes "The Compaq Testdrive program is now making available a Beowulf cluster of XP1000s running Alpha Linux. If you sign up for the testdrive program you can register for an account on the cluster to try out your applications in this cluster environment. There is no charge for this program. Compaq is making this available to Open Source developers. No strings, catches, or hooks of any type."

Comments

Uptime

[Aphelion]

One should hope they've minimized some of the problems I experienced when they first started this program. Of them, the most common was simply 'connection refused.' I'm not sure if it was the Slashdot effect or something I was missing.

And now the obvious question.. Why Alphas? Are Beowulf clusters possible on Intels?

Re:Uptime

[technos]

Beowulf clusters are usually Intel-based; They're 'commodity copuercomputers' after all, and Alpha's are hardly 'commodity'.

Compaq is showing the Alpha Beowulf bacause, as their manufacturer, they want their flagship product out there representing them to the masses.

Plus, an Alpha cluster is so much cooler than just another cluster of PIII's...

Re:Uptime

[VAXman]

Plus, an Alpha cluster is so much cooler than just another cluster of PIII's...

A 21264 uses about 50 watts. A Pentium III is low power enough to be used in laptops (which the Alpha hasn't done since a special version of the 21064 many years ago). Multiply this by the number of machines in a cluster, and I think you will find that the Pentium III cluster is significantly cooler than the Alpha cluster and will require significantly less cooling for the room it operates in.

FORTRAN

[Mr Krinkle]

I know all of my testing will be done using that. Forget the C:) All in all this awesome for major companies to do stuff like this. Kind of like when they donate the stuff to colleges for learning purposes. It does nothing but promote a company as a good guy and gets people learning their stuff so they will be influenced if they have a choice to buy. Great job Compaq.

Compaq

[Accipiter]

I'm not a fan of Compaq Computers by any stretch of the imagination, but I have to say I think what they're doing with the Test Drive program is fantastic. An absolute no-charge way to give Linux a spin, and even try out your own applications. It may not be the total answer to convincing corporate America that Linux is ready, but it's certainly a good start.

On a related note, I got a FedEx package today, and inside was my Compaq LINUX license plate that I got free from the first test drive. Good stuff!

The plate reads:

Compaq Solutions Alliance Test Drive
www.compaq.com/csa

L I N U X

Linus is a Registered Trademark
of Linus Torvalds

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Re:Compaq

[dattaway]

You might want to ask... They gave away these Linux - Live Free or Die" at the ALS this year. Looks mighty sporty on the car...

Don't shoot me!

[EricWright]

Ob Stupid Comment:

I wonder what a beowulf cluster of these things... oh, wait... never mind ;-)

A new type of contest

[Uruk]

They don't seem to be restricting the participation in this to developers - they just make you answer a lot of questions to get a temporary account.

I signed up for one, because I'm interested to try it out, but I'm somewhat worried that this could degenerate into a new type of contest - the "Hack Compaq's boxes" contest. I hope the script kiddies stay away...

Re:No catches......

[Anonymous Coward]

This is from the DEC part of Compaq. Doesn't anyone here realize that Compaq is trying to become a big player in the Enterprise like IBM and HP and are pushing Alpha like crazy here and in the scientific community. IBM is one of the biggest WinNT supporters. That doesn't mean they don't also push AIX, AS400, Java, etc. Compaq isn't just PCs anymore.

Typo or not?

[EricWright]

Linus is a Registered Trademark of Linus Torvalds

Linus or Linux?

Eric

Slashdot Effect, analyzed.

[Signal 11]

*click* *pause* *reload* *pause* *reload* *reload* *reload* *reload* *reload* *pause* Welcome to the compaq test drive signup form. blah blah blah username blah blah password blah blah email address blah .. (root) *clickity-click-click* (aadvark) *click* phone 555-1212*clickity-click* *SUBMIT*......

connection refused *reload*
connection refused *reload*
connection timed out *reload*
500 internal server error *reload*
*reload* *reload* *reload* *reload* *reload*
DO YOU AGREE TO THE CONDITIONS FOUND HEREIN, blah blah blah blah, sell your soul, blah blah blah blah...
Yes.

connection refused *reload*
connection refused *reload* *reload* *reload*
An e-mail is immediately being sent to l335h4x0rd00d@hotmail.com which you may use to access the compaq server(s) you have chosen at blah blah blah

Beowulf on Intel (or anything)

[nathanm]

Beowulf clusters can be made of any platform Linux (or other flavors of unix) runs on. The software needed to run a Beowulf cluster, PVM or MPI, are open source. Compaq used Alpha because it's there flaqship CPU and it's the highest performance CPU available. For more info, see the Beowulf Project.

How tweaked are we talking?

[Darlok]

Does anyone know what scheduler / load balancer / etc etc etc that they're using? As of roughly 6 months ago, getting a Beowulf to be tuned enough to actually show significant performance increases compared to manually firing off independent processes on each machine was extraordinarily difficult. I never actually managed it.

We had a small cluster of Alpha PC164's and a much larger of Pentiums. We "upgraded" from a Beowulf-style system to a Mosix system, and performance shot straight through the roof. Unfortunately, Mosix doesn't run on Alphas (yet), so we bit the bullet on 'em and have a bunch of glorified paperweights.

I'd love to get back on the Linux train with the Alphas, but Beowulf seemed to have too many if's and require far more effort than it returned benefits. Has this changed, and how?

Re:No catches......

[waite]

Please keep in mind that we (formerly DEC) were never in bed with Wintel. ----Mike

Re:nice.. too bad these machines are firewalled

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

I think this guy just wants to be uberleet and say "y4h d00d, im websurf1ng fr0m a be0wu1f b0x!" or something. It completely fits the Slashdot "Beowulfs are cool, I bet you could play a really mean game of Quake on one!" mentality, completely disregarding the fact that along with a Beowulf's high bandwidth it has *very* high latency; it's NOT for interactive processes but for *offline* processing.

Then again, what's with geeks who build a Beowulf machine just for mass-MP3 encoding and the like? You'd be better-served by just having independent systems and avoid the overhead of PVM or whatever. Unless you're doing large-scale numerical analysis or a lot of very intense rendering (with PVM/POVRAY), a Beowulf is completely, utterly *pointless*.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Compaq, Alphas, Hmm

[jabber]

It's actually a very interesting experiment.

Using Alpha processors let's Compaq try out an industrial strength B cluster, something that could run an enterprise, serve as a superserver or predict the weather.

Beowulf was originally conceived of as a way to crank out supercomputer performance out of cheap, old PCs. This ups the ante, since Compaq is putting it together out of supercomputers to begin with. Interesting indeed.

Further, by openning it up to the general public gratis, I'd be interested what it is that they're REALLY testing. The performance of the cluster, or the security of their OS tweaks... Hmmm...

Re:Compaq, Alphas, Hmm

[JordanH]

• Further, by openning it up to the general public gratis, I'd be interested what it is that they're REALLY testing. The performance of the cluster, or the security of their OS tweaks... Hmmm...

See disclaimer below. I'm not in any way involved with the test drive program.

While I'm sure the people who are running these machines are interested in performance stats and security issues with putting the testdrives out to the public, I think the real purpose of this is Marketing.

There have been several stories about various of the Compaq testdrive programs here, so they've succeeded, to some extent, in getting the word out.

I think they are trying to overcome people's perception that Alpha is too much of an odd, niche, architecture and won't really run your applications. It's not true and you can get on one of these machines and prove it for yourself.

They are also trying to get the word out about the fact that Alpha runs Linux (including Beowolf clusters), FreeBSD, Tru64 UNIX and of course, my personal favorite OpenVMS.

Disclaimer: Yes, I work for Compaq, No, I'm not speaking for Compaq.

-Jordan Henderson

But I need them..

[Skinka]

No strings, catches, or hooks of any type.

Oh great, how am I supposed to get anything done without using strings, hooks or (try) catches..

Cheap shot. :)

[jabber]

Now, now.. We have a few more days before we rip into TransMeta. ;)