[Beowulf] Re: Estimating cluster power consumption - I/O issues

[Ed Karns]

" ... and being able to boot and run each system individually from  
its own hard drive will save you a world of time and possible  
frustration. ..."

" ... ... Some may argue the exact opposite. ..."

" ... ... ... Well, it *is* one of the most fundamental religious  
arguments of high performance clusters. ..."

Granted and granted. It would seem that in the initial stages of  
building and bringing up a new beowulf system by a relatively new  
comer, the ability to boot from hard drive each individual node with  
potentially buggy code ... would seem to be an advantage. After  
debugging these systems, of course, processor speeds are enhanced if  
the buses (and power supplies) of each node are "lightened up".  
Removal of anything that "hand shakes" with bus = removal of  
extraneous video, I/O, drives and other bus linked hardware and  
features, likewise ... improves performance. (I notice that some  
performance system builders also fail to "disable" many built-in  
features in CMOS BIOS setup ... thus unknowingly degrading  
processor / bus performance.)

Ed
FireWireStuff.com


On Dec 16, 2005, at 12:00 PM, beowulf-request at beowulf.org wrote:

>    1. Re: Re: Estimating cluster power consumption (r reynoldson)
>       (Douglas Eadline)
>    2. Re: Re: Estimating cluster power consumption (r reynoldson)
>       (Greg Lindahl)
>    3. Re: Estimating cluster power consumption
>       (steve_heaton at iinet.net.au)
>