Scyld: Myrinet config?

[Daniel Ridge]

Jarrod,

On Wed, 2 May 2001, Jarrod A. Smith wrote:

> Ideally, the mgmt node will not be a compute node, and will not have a
> Myrinet card in it.  It will not run computations.  Is it the Scyld
> beowulf software's "philosophy" to make use of the management node as a
> compute node, or can you set it up to be a dedicated
> login/gateway/compiler/management server?

This can be done. When running Scyld, The Chiba City cluster at Argonne
National Lab operates exactly this way. On that machine, you can even use
the magic Scyld inline-mpirun system to invoke jobs from the master as
transparently as if a copy of the program were running on the master.

Having said that -- I really like to be able to place a rank from an MPI
job on the master. This allows me to be able to access filesystems that
might not be available on the nodes, contact the outside world if I
choose, open the X display with less hassle, etc. You can certianly
develop codes that involve a copy of the job on the master -- but
configure that rank not to participate in the expensive parts of your
code.

Regards,
	Dan Ridge
	Scyld Computing Corporation