Beowulf in a Box (fwd)

[Robert G. Brown]

On Tue, 29 Sep 1998, Dominic Baines wrote:

> Robert,
> 
> I'm about to put in a facility at work that has a Beowulf cluster included
> 
> in the proposal under Phase II once it is all up and running and the
> costs,
> both hardware and support are part Intel funded
> (well a lot of MY salary is anyway) if that helps you any :-)
> 
> It's a pure marketing project with no serious application or use expected,
> other
> than a few lucky souls however, it would appear to be a visibility
> exercise on behalf of all involved.

<snip>

> Believe it or not MS are also part funding it as well and they KNOWabout
> the Linux and Beowulf part..

We're also recipients of an Intel equipment grant.  A couple of years
ago, when we first won the award, Intel put a fair amount of pressure on
the University to make the gifted systems into WinNT boxes.  As it
became clear that most of the systems would NOT end up running NT (they
are running linux and freebsd and some NT -- and maybe even Solaris X86
-- , with linux pretty much the winner in numbers) Intel has become
disengaged and even distantly supportive.  Dell, the actual systems
provider, is apparently preparing to start selling pre-configured linux
systems and have actually provided free Dell hardware to, e.g. Doug
Ledford (the linux aic7xxx person) to help get drivers ready to run on
their high end servers.  So I knew about this sort of support -- we also
get an FTE out of the grant (not mine, but somebody's) and I believe
that there is no restriction on hiring a MS-skilled person.

I've also heard a few whispers from "reliable sources" about another
kind of Intel/beowulf project -- one where Intel has set up and is
running a beowulf or two of their very own "inside" Intel.  This is a
bit different from funding something outside Intel, and a fascinating
source of speculation is what effect this might have had on their
decision to form an Alliance.  After all, WE know that linux scales well
and performs well and is remarkably stable on Intel hardware, but Intel
very likely had to see for itself -- pushed, of course, by the common
knowledge that linux is one of THE premiere platforms being used by
ISP's and Web servers.  As I said, I think that they've had good reasons
to be discrete about it (if the rumors are true, of course).

Gossip, gossip, gossip...:-)

    rgb

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@phy.duke.edu