[Beowulf] A Cluster of Motherboard.

[Alvin Oga]

On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Andrew Piskorski wrote:

> > However, lots of people have successfully built clusters from stacks of 
> > mobos.  I think the biggest one (in terms of # of nodes) is the one with a 
> > dozen or so Via mini-ATX boards.  I don't know that I've seen any bare 
> > bones clusters with more than 20 nodes.

we've shipped our (4U) mini-itx chassis capable of up to 10 mini-itx mb 
per chassis running off 1 or 2 +12v dc power supply ( 75A - 100A )

	http://www.itx-blades.net/gif.blades/4U-BLADE.jpg

	- the i/o bracket is removable so any mini-itx mb can be used
	( preferably, those w/o the silly vertical sound ports )

	- we use a 200W +12v dc-dc atx power supply on each
	mini-itx mb instead of the gigantic standard atx ps

	- the 4u box, when fully loaded is expected to weigh in at
	about 200lbs .. ( it's not meant to bend out of shape :-)
		- about 10-15lbs per blade

	- we now have a fancy 7" svga LCD front panel
	to hide the messy wires :-)
 
> Oh, I know of at least 3 bare-board clusters much larger than that
> (and some smaller):
> 
>   http://jessen.ch/ammonite/
>   http://joule.bu.edu/~hazen/LinuxCluster/
>   http://krone.physik.unizh.ch/~stadel/zBox/
> 
>   http://www.abo.fi/~physcomp/cluster/celeron.html
>   http://physics.bu.edu/~sandvik/clusters/abo/celeron.html

- the 4U chassis can be made available for r/d lab purposes

- there's some work to be done ... like how to power up 20 or 40 disks
  at the same time off of one 100A 12v power supply :-)

c ya
alvin