[Beowulf] First 96-Node Desktop Cluster Ships

[Rayson Ho]

Looks like they are using low power processors, so may be someone can
confirm that??

Also, they took Gridengine and somehow modified it for this machine.

Rayson


On 5/4/05, Jim Lux <james.p.lux at jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
> It's an interesting concept. I spoke with the folks at Orion last year, and
> they've identified that "zero infrastructure hassle" aspect as a key point.
> Has to plug into a single wall socket, for instance. The other thing is that
> they're pushing it as a minimal adminstration widget, which may or may not
> come off. That is, there's no expectation that the end user/owner will be
> rolling their own kernel mods, swapping processors or disks, etc.
> 
> Maybe the conceptual model is to compare it to what desktop PCs, or maybe a
> Sun, were in the 80s, relative to a VAX or mainframe down the hall.  With
> the former, you decide when to turn it on or off, you decide what runs on it
> and when.  With the latter, you compete for resources with all the other
> users sharing the investment.
> 
> The question will be whether enough useful application software is available
> in a "orion compatible" form so that the casual user doesn't get sucked into
> an admin morass. I would think that if Orion and the vendors of products
> like HFSS or ADS or NASTRAN (all big computationally intensive FEM style
> codes) get together to provide a "turnkey" installation with significantly
> higher performance it will fly.
> 
> If it can make it possible to change the modeling usage paradigm from
> "batch" to "interactive" then it will have real value.  Rather than think in
> terms of "build model, submit job, do something else while waiting for
> results to come back" if you can think in terms of "Build model, wait 30
> seconds, look at results, change parameter, wait 30 seconds, look at
> results", you'll have a different style of use.
> 
> I noticed that when computers got fast enough to do Numerical
> Electromagnetics Code (NEC) models in seconds, as opposed to minutes, my
> design style changed.  Instead of spending a few hours writing scripts to
> fire off a whole systematic batch of runs to do a parametric study
> (typically overnight) and then look at the plots the next morning, I'd
> manually optimize the design by iterating the parameters.  In these sorts of
> things, the "goal function" is sort of ill defined: I want a reasonably good
> impedance match, and no huge side or back lobes, where "reasonably good" and
> "huge" are sort of fuzzy concepts.
> 
> Jim Lux
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Eugen Leitl" <eugen at leitl.org>
> To: <Beowulf at beowulf.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 3:29 AM
> Subject: [Beowulf] First 96-Node Desktop Cluster Ships
> 
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