Alternative hardware approach

[Chris Worley]

Jerzy Kakol wrote:
> Such
> thing would allow to build relatively cheap clusters consisting of hundreds
> of rack mounted nodes (no PC cases, they are also spare expense). Is there
> something like that available on the market fairly below $100?
> 

Think of the cost benefit of commodity components.  Any mobo that
requires a redesign, and will only sell to a limited market is going to
cost a grundle (2x to 10x) more than its fully embellished commodity
counterpart.

We sell our "AltaClusters" W/ "ACE" control to take (cost) advantage of
ATX motherboards and power supplies and full height PCI adapters, while
minimizing space by fitting them into our custom cabinet (and also
designed to compensate for the facts that ATX motherboards were not
intended to fit in close quarters, and their power/reset controls and
temperature monitoring become cumbersome past 1 node).  We refer to this
configuration when a customer requires price-performance.

For space-performance, we sell the "MCluster".  For example, one Alpha
21164 only needs two slots in a 6U rack.  Even the passive backplane in
this configuration isn't inexpensive (and you can't buy it at your local
Fry's).

<Commercial time>
See http://www.altatech.com
</end commercial>

Chris