Opinions needed on new system

[Jeromy Hollenshead]

We are thinking of setting up a cluster of computers and I have spec'd out
the following to be sent out for bids.  Is there anything obviously wrong
with my setup. We already have a 19inch rack and 48 port HP switch that we
are going to use.

Does anyone have any suggestions on the type of network card to ask for?
Specific chipsets that work well under linux.  I have seen the How-to and it
seemed any of the 100 Mbit PCI cards should work.

We are planning to write our application in FORTRAN.  Are the Portland Group
compiler/profiler/debugger  suitable for this, or, are there better options.

Does anyone have any experience with the new Thunderbird Processors?

Any suggestions?  We are only able to spend around $22,000 USD.

Thanks,

Jeromy
 




Host System
-----------------
AMD Athlon 750 Thunderbird Processor
512M ECC SDRAM (PC133)
ATX Motherboard (KT133 chipset)
(2) x 10/100 Ethernet adapter
Matrox G400 AGP graphics card
RAID 5, 4x 9 GB SCSI hard drive, 10,000 rpm
19 inch monitor (1280x1024)
keyboard, mouse ( logitech or microsoft), CDROM ( > 32X)
3.5" floppy drive
19" rack mount enclosure with hot-swapable drives for RAID
Chasis Slides
Cables TP Networking Cat 5  7'
Cables to connect floppy, hardrives, and cdrom


Eight Nodes - Each includes
---------------------------------
AMD Athlon 750 Thunderbird Processor
ATX Motherboard  (KT133 chipset)
512M ECC SDRAM (PC133)
10/100 Ethernet adapter
(open pci slot for future ethernet card)
EIDE hardrive - (10-20 gig)  DMA/66
3.5" floppy drive, graphics card
19" rack mount enclosure
Chasis slides
Cables TP Networking Cat 5  7'
Cables to connect floppy,  and hardrives


Software/System ( pre-loaded)
---------------------------------------
Red Hat Linux 
PVM and MPI installed
Integration of Host system with Nodes
Portland Group Compilers
(PGHPF) parallel FORTRAN for clusters
(PGDBG) symbolic debugger
(PGPROF) performance profiler
Batch system (such as PBS)