apparently I had no idea what I was talking about... it appears that they are booting from a linux cd that will be provided... so to answer your question... macs would probably work providing they are new enough to run linux...
I think you missed the aspect of amperage... Yes, powerstrips are magical, but even powerstrips will not increase the amount of amperage available through a circuit breaker.
Have you ever seen an electrical wire smoke because the current running through it began to melt and burn the insulation? I have... and that's why we have circuit breakers to stop that from happening inside your walls and along gym floors full of hundreds of students with their computers strewn about in concentric circles from one outlet in the middle of the gym floor...
So, yea... bring your gasoline powered generators instead.
Since I was a small boy, I have been facinated with computers... I researched paralell processor computers (by this I mean that I asked my Computer Engineer uncle about them) and quickly thought about alternate interfaces for "linking" processors, other than building custom mother boards capable of distributing computing power amongst multiple processors... and was quickly discouraged by the lack of comunication speed inherent in the options available at the time (namely: Serial, Paralell, ISA... etc.).
And then, what's interesting... is that I was JUST thinking about this the other day.. and told my friend Kevin about my idea that I had when I was a kid... and said "I want to design a software or maybe a type of "add-on" card that would allow you to connect multiple computers together to form a type of super-computer".
Then I log in today, and see this headline! Blink a few times and read it again, then read the article and don't quite understand it and then realize that, although neat, it's not that cool the way they are doing it...
First, even 10/100 LAN is a bit slow to properly transfer data at rates that would be condusive to properly handling large amounts of data. I would liken this method to a Muliti-Processor Xeon motherboad with a 66mhz front side bus. Yes, the processors are super-fast, but what's the point if you can't send them the data or receive it fast enough to use them?
Second, if all they are doing is connecting computers, what do they plan to acheive? From the article I see no plans for organizing the computers into "Pre-Processing", "Processing" and "Clean-up" groups in the true form of a Parallel Processor computer...
And Third, I thought of it first... haha
Anyway, I still wish I could be there to see what happens and how it goes... I hope the benchmark tests will be properly designed to include both small and large datasets and sufficiently complex procedures...
I'm not sure the SOFTWARE aspect of this "Super Computer" but, uh... maybe the programmers are coding this in a Microsoft language...
Mentioned before is SETI@home (software distributed amongst many clients) and another (I'm too lazy to scroll back up and read). This "Psuedo-Supercomputer" aspect is mearly a distributed software application which shares data over a network. All hosts must run a program to "Link" them together in such a manner that they distribute the computing. Therefore, the platform of which this client is programmed for would be the limiting factor in the sucessfull implementation of this "SuperComputer". (eventually they may write clients for other platforms... but it sounds like they have settled on the PC for now).
Plus, they are Macs... heh. (what I mean by this is that I have an underlying contempt for something I can't rip open and reassemble the guts of, and Macs are much too "User Friendly" to properly "fix" in this manner.)
Hopefully this is coming off as humerous and not offensive, both of which I am capable of in a somewhat unpredictable manner, but in all actuality, it's probably just me rambling...
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apparently I had no idea what I was talking about... it appears that they are booting from a linux cd that will be provided... so to answer your question... macs would probably work providing they are new enough to run linux...
I think you missed the aspect of amperage... Yes, powerstrips are magical, but even powerstrips will not increase the amount of amperage available through a circuit breaker.
Have you ever seen an electrical wire smoke because the current running through it began to melt and burn the insulation? I have... and that's why we have circuit breakers to stop that from happening inside your walls and along gym floors full of hundreds of students with their computers strewn about in concentric circles from one outlet in the middle of the gym floor...
So, yea... bring your gasoline powered generators instead.
Well, not exactly... but kinda.
... etc.).
.. and told my friend Kevin about my idea that I had when I was a kid... and said "I want to design a software or maybe a type of "add-on" card that would allow you to connect multiple computers together to form a type of super-computer".
Since I was a small boy, I have been facinated with computers... I researched paralell processor computers (by this I mean that I asked my Computer Engineer uncle about them) and quickly thought about alternate interfaces for "linking" processors, other than building custom mother boards capable of distributing computing power amongst multiple processors... and was quickly discouraged by the lack of comunication speed inherent in the options available at the time (namely: Serial, Paralell, ISA
And then, what's interesting... is that I was JUST thinking about this the other day
Then I log in today, and see this headline! Blink a few times and read it again, then read the article and don't quite understand it and then realize that, although neat, it's not that cool the way they are doing it...
First, even 10/100 LAN is a bit slow to properly transfer data at rates that would be condusive to properly handling large amounts of data. I would liken this method to a Muliti-Processor Xeon motherboad with a 66mhz front side bus. Yes, the processors are super-fast, but what's the point if you can't send them the data or receive it fast enough to use them?
Second, if all they are doing is connecting computers, what do they plan to acheive? From the article I see no plans for organizing the computers into "Pre-Processing", "Processing" and "Clean-up" groups in the true form of a Parallel Processor computer...
And Third, I thought of it first... haha
Anyway, I still wish I could be there to see what happens and how it goes... I hope the benchmark tests will be properly designed to include both small and large datasets and sufficiently complex procedures...
blink...
I'm not sure the SOFTWARE aspect of this "Super Computer" but, uh... maybe the programmers are coding this in a Microsoft language...
Mentioned before is SETI@home (software distributed amongst many clients) and another (I'm too lazy to scroll back up and read). This "Psuedo-Supercomputer" aspect is mearly a distributed software application which shares data over a network. All hosts must run a program to "Link" them together in such a manner that they distribute the computing. Therefore, the platform of which this client is programmed for would be the limiting factor in the sucessfull implementation of this "SuperComputer". (eventually they may write clients for other platforms... but it sounds like they have settled on the PC for now).
Plus, they are Macs... heh. (what I mean by this is that I have an underlying contempt for something I can't rip open and reassemble the guts of, and Macs are much too "User Friendly" to properly "fix" in this manner.)
Hopefully this is coming off as humerous and not offensive, both of which I am capable of in a somewhat unpredictable manner, but in all actuality, it's probably just me rambling...