that is the remarkable thing.
The down side is the reliability of the boards in large clusters is unproven, but the power savings and low initial cost are so attractive I predict that it will just be a matter of time before someone builds a large cluster with these things.
I can tell you the boards are electrically fragile and wont take a lot of abuse, so you gotta be careful to not kill them. I've already killed one by accidentally reversing the hard drive cable. I've had another spontaneously flake out when I was stress testing the cluster. But this kind of thing is not unexpected when you put 12 new machines in the same system and power them up.
Overall it looks promising.
sure it is massively parallel.
You can have a massively parallel cluster of two nodes. It's not a massive cluster. It is massively parallel... it depends totally on being parallel for speed, and it is capable of communicating from the contronlling node to all the computational nodes and between the computational nodes.
that is not my understanding, tho the definition might bechanging slowly over time.
My understanding of a beowulf cluster definition is that it is a bunch of off the shelf computers wortking in parallel, and furhter definition of it seems fuzzy. I'm also aware that there is much disagreement, because there are so many ways to build and configure parallel computers
That is precisely what it is optimized for.
I wanted a cluster with none of the headaches of a room full of computers. This one could be better in terms of servicability, but it is not too bad overall.
I can reinstall a ndoe in a couple of minutes, but I have to disassemble the rack to replace a dead motherboard.
I used them because they were small and used less power than ordinary hard drives. Laptop drives would be a good middle-of-the-road compromise on size and power use. The microdrives are pretty slow.. so I used nfs to mount/usr so I would have a nice place to put things.
Using drives to boot the nodes made for a much simpler, and more sanitary configuration than using pxeboot. You do get off cheaper using pxeboot (no drives to buy) at a slight penalty in memory and network resoruces.
Because I started with three nodes, and kept doubling the number of nodes until I had enough power to do some serious work with.
I built a cluster with three nodes to prove it would work, then I went to 6 and saw a good speed increase, and went with 12 and got almsot twice the speed as 6.
I read the link you posted. It was good reading. I'm currently using EPIA V8000A motherboards and have not experienced any network issues, and the fpu seems fine. I hope to find time to build linpack and get a proper benchmark soon as indications are that I'm getting much more than the 1 GFLP that you experienced with the EPIA 800 series boards.
Glen
You could use the mini cluster for serious work.
read the numbers I posted on the FPU performance thread.
The mini cluster is a fast computer. I would not try to replace the company onyx with a 12 node mini cluster. But I'd sure replace any single cpu box you have with it.
Glen
the fpu performance is not too bad, really.
I've run some simple tests on the mini clluster and here are some numbers.
I have a little test program for parallel that does 6 floating point math operatins inside a loop that iterates 2 billion times.
I can run a process on 1-12 cpus, or I can even run multiple copies of the same thing on all the cpus and have just made a little run to show you what I mean.
here is the breakdown.
on 1 cpu it runs in 386 seconds
on 2 cpus it runs in 193 seconds
on 4 cpus it runs in 96 seconds
on 6 cpus it runs in 64 seconds
on 8 cpus it runs in 48 seconds
on 10 cpus it runs in 38 seconds
on 12 cpus it runs in 32 seconds
That is how long it is taking to perform 12 billion calculations.
In contrast, a similar non-parallel program running on my single cpu 2.4 GHZ p4 machine takes 265 seconds to run.
You can readily see that at around 6 cpu's you are getting into having a pretty fast machine. At 12 cpus it is faster than any production pc you can buy.
It is just that simple. This stuff really works.
Glen
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that is the remarkable thing. The down side is the reliability of the boards in large clusters is unproven, but the power savings and low initial cost are so attractive I predict that it will just be a matter of time before someone builds a large cluster with these things. I can tell you the boards are electrically fragile and wont take a lot of abuse, so you gotta be careful to not kill them. I've already killed one by accidentally reversing the hard drive cable. I've had another spontaneously flake out when I was stress testing the cluster. But this kind of thing is not unexpected when you put 12 new machines in the same system and power them up. Overall it looks promising.
yah it is low power. It is more like 240 watts total absolute max, and arounfd 120 watts idle.
sure it is massively parallel. You can have a massively parallel cluster of two nodes. It's not a massive cluster. It is massively parallel... it depends totally on being parallel for speed, and it is capable of communicating from the contronlling node to all the computational nodes and between the computational nodes.
not they, me. and you betcha It's FreeBSD Baby!
that is not my understanding, tho the definition might bechanging slowly over time. My understanding of a beowulf cluster definition is that it is a bunch of off the shelf computers wortking in parallel, and furhter definition of it seems fuzzy. I'm also aware that there is much disagreement, because there are so many ways to build and configure parallel computers
That is especially scarey , considering I chose the name from the old SciFi movie "Daemon Seed"
Well, you actually save about 25 % using pxeboot on this cluster. I was more interested in simplicity, small size, and low power use than anything.
That is precisely what it is optimized for. I wanted a cluster with none of the headaches of a room full of computers. This one could be better in terms of servicability, but it is not too bad overall. I can reinstall a ndoe in a couple of minutes, but I have to disassemble the rack to replace a dead motherboard.
Low power use, so you can run a cluster at home without a huge utility bill or needing special air conditioning.
Because the config is simple, and the drives are small, and use very low power. Also, nobody has tried it before to my knowledge
I used them because they were small and used less power than ordinary hard drives. Laptop drives would be a good middle-of-the-road compromise on size and power use. The microdrives are pretty slow.. so I used nfs to mount /usr so I would have a nice place to put things.
Using drives to boot the nodes made for a much simpler, and more sanitary configuration than using pxeboot. You do get off cheaper using pxeboot (no drives to buy) at a slight penalty in memory and network resoruces.
It is looking like it will be around $1 per MFLP lets wait and see what the official benchmarks come out to be.
Because I started with three nodes, and kept doubling the number of nodes until I had enough power to do some serious work with. I built a cluster with three nodes to prove it would work, then I went to 6 and saw a good speed increase, and went with 12 and got almsot twice the speed as 6.
I read the link you posted. It was good reading. I'm currently using EPIA V8000A motherboards and have not experienced any network issues, and the fpu seems fine. I hope to find time to build linpack and get a proper benchmark soon as indications are that I'm getting much more than the 1 GFLP that you experienced with the EPIA 800 series boards. Glen
The cost is about 1/4 that of using high end pc's Glen
You could use the mini cluster for serious work. read the numbers I posted on the FPU performance thread. The mini cluster is a fast computer. I would not try to replace the company onyx with a 12 node mini cluster. But I'd sure replace any single cpu box you have with it. Glen
the fpu performance is not too bad, really. I've run some simple tests on the mini clluster and here are some numbers. I have a little test program for parallel that does 6 floating point math operatins inside a loop that iterates 2 billion times. I can run a process on 1-12 cpus, or I can even run multiple copies of the same thing on all the cpus and have just made a little run to show you what I mean. here is the breakdown. on 1 cpu it runs in 386 seconds on 2 cpus it runs in 193 seconds on 4 cpus it runs in 96 seconds on 6 cpus it runs in 64 seconds on 8 cpus it runs in 48 seconds on 10 cpus it runs in 38 seconds on 12 cpus it runs in 32 seconds That is how long it is taking to perform 12 billion calculations. In contrast, a similar non-parallel program running on my single cpu 2.4 GHZ p4 machine takes 265 seconds to run. You can readily see that at around 6 cpu's you are getting into having a pretty fast machine. At 12 cpus it is faster than any production pc you can buy. It is just that simple. This stuff really works. Glen