[Beowulf] What is a "proper" machine count for a cluster

[Robert G. Brown]

On Wed, 14 Mar 2007, Mathew Shember wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> A brand new noob entering this realm.
>
> I want to initiate a project involving a beowulf cluster.   I have two 
> engineers who are VERY interested.
>
> Anyway.   I was wondering what would be a "decent" amount of equipment to 
> start off and the preferred linux if any.
>
> I know the basic answer is "it depends" on the app.
>
> I am just wondering what is a reasonable amount of computers to allocate for 
> playing around.
>
> I was thinking 4 pentiums with dual gig processors.  Ram would be a gig or 
> more.

That would be fine.  I tend to recommend around 8 processors to be able
to see elementary Amdahlian scaling for various trial/toy programs.  You
can get by with as few as two to demonstrate the principles, but 8 is
definitely good.

   rgb

>
> Thanks for reading this.
>
> Back to reading the links.....
>
>
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-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu