Newbie Alert: Beginning parallel programming with Scyld

[Garriss, Michael]

You should take the time to learn C++ rather then C.  The boost organization
( http://www.boost.org ) has a very stable and easy to learn threading
library that is great for beginners and experts.  It helps the programmer to
avoid some of the most common mistakes that lead the race-conditions and
dead-locks.
 __________________________
/|                         |
||  Michael Garriss        |
||   Software Engineer     |
||   Contractor            |
||   mgarriss at softhome.net |
||_________________________|
|/________________________/

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Cole [mailto:kjcole at gri.gallaudet.edu]
Sent: Saturday, October 12, 2002 7:30 AM
To: Beowulf Users
Subject: Newbie Alert: Beginning parallel programming with Scyld


Hi all,

I just set up a Scyld Basic Beowulf cluster, and have no experience
with how to write code to take advantage of it.  I was a mainframe
FORTRAN and assembler language programmer for many years (lots of 
different architectures), and have very limited exposure to C.
(These days, for MOST of what I want to do, Python gets the job done.)
However a physics prof. here does have a problem in mind that involves
manipulating several satellite images, and as I understand it, he's 
written a non-parallelized program that's grinding through the data 
very slowly.  I think he coded it in C.

Are there any nice, free tests that I can write (or download and untar)
that will let me see the effects of what I've got?  What's a good 
starting point?  I thought about POV-RAY, but when I went to download, it
said I'd need a newer glibc than what came with the Scyld Basic CD's (RH 6.2
w/ a 2.2 kernel, and I forget what version of glibc.)

On a related note, are there resources I should be looking at to try to
bring this cluster up to date?  At this point, it's more of an experiment
and we're not yet willing to throw money at the project. 

Thanks!

-- 
 Kevin Cole, RHCE, Linux Admin  |  Key ID:  0xE6F332C7
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