The use of a beowulf.

[Coetmeur, Alain]

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Alain Coetmeur, Informatique-CDC DTA
mailto:alain.coetmeur@icdc.CaisseDesDepots.fr 

-----Message d'origine-----
De: Geoffroy Doucet [mailto:doucetg@nortelnetworks.com]


> It is possible to use a beowulf without rewrite the application? Please
let me know. 

as told here short answer is no.

for some application that use many processes that
consume much CPU in a quite balanced way, you can try to use
a process migrating kernel like Mosix.

for example it should be easy (should, no test!)
to complie much faster with a Mosix Beowulf
and the gnumake with the -j otipn that spawn 
multiple processes in parallel.

for a complex chain of processes it should get
speed up if CPU in balanced between various processes.

otherwise you need to make some concurency appears
and then communicate and synchronise all, with tools
like PVM/MPI or even Corba or sockets... you may enve use
horrible things like files... but you will have to 
rethink your program(s).