That's a Whole Lot of Power, Mac

[Walter B. Ligon III]

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Subject: That's a Whole Lot of Power, Mac
From: "Walter B. Ligon III" <walt at clemson.edu>
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Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2002 09:27:38 -0600
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Wow,

I generally expect a lot more from Wired.  I don't know Dean Dauger, and
I think its interesting he is relatively unknown in the world of parallel
computing, but I can assure you that following the instructions on the
laughable 1-page installation sheet does NOT result in an effective
parallel computer.  Also, one could easily write a much shorter Linux-based
installation sheet:

1) buy several Dell PCs with Linux pre-installed

2) connect to internet

3) run your parallel application with the existing MPI software

Voila!  Even Dauger could do it!  Further, people have been running
"parallel computers" of this kind not only on machines with different
kernels - but with different operating systems on different BRAND hardware
for 15 years - PVM allowed one to run a parallel virtual machine on
a Sun, a PC, an HP, and an IBM all at the same time.

This article was poorly researched and self-serving to say the least.

I really would expect more from Wired.

Walt Ligon
- -- 
Dr. Walter B. Ligon III
Associate Professor
ECE Department
Clemson University



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