One might make a nice small cluster for learning purposes. With 8 nodes, you could do a lot of experimenting. Even 4 nodes works, but with 8, if your parallelization works, you get a pretty dramatic speedup.
And, when you screw up, and need to reinstall all the software everywhere, 4-8 nodes is manageable by hand. You could also, if you have extra network cards, experiment with things like different interconnect architectures. There is significant value in a stack of boxes which you "own" and don't have to account for the use of (or lack), for that sort of "fooling around" For production purposes, you're probably better off buying newer computers: Power consumption, hassles, etc. On 6/30/11 1:33 PM, "Orion Poplawski" <[email protected]> wrote: >One can find some pretty inexpensive older servers on eBay that probably >could >yield a decent $/flop ratio. I was wondering if people here had >suggestions >for classic workhorse servers - basic 1U boxes that did/do pretty well be >are >a couple years old at this point. > >Thanks! > >-- >Orion Poplawski >Technical Manager 303-415-9701 x222 >NWRA/CoRA Division FAX: 303-415-9702 >3380 Mitchell Lane [email protected] >Boulder, CO 80301 http://www.cora.nwra.com >_______________________________________________ >Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing >To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit >http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
