i am currently in the process of researching about distributed systems, their design and analysis, and i'm wondering if there is such a thing as a general purpose cluster -- like a distributed environment, which you can actually "program" to work as you need it.
i've heard of and read a little about beowulf clusters, and other distributed OSes, (Mach, Mosix, Plan 9 project) and clustered databases offered by Oracle and IBM that run on linux. the distributed OS concept seems to be too much for a general purpose computing environment, unlike the java vm concept of a multi-platform computing environment. clustered databases only seek to serve the database service, but what i am after is a programmable computing environment which is distributed among a certain number of nodes. i've heard beowulf was something like this, but i am not really sure -- from all i've read (and recall) it is a cluster which runs programs specially built with certain libraries which are run accross a number of beowulf cluster (please correct me of this notion if am being mistaken). the parts i am currently researching on (designing and developing) are a vm which will run on nodes to form a "grid" on which programs written specifically for the vm will be executed, and a PL (of sorts) which allows for concurrent contructs and low level assembly like instructions to be interpreted and run by the vm. if there's anything similar to this effect that is already in linux, it would be great if someone could point me to it. :) -- -=[mikhail]=- _ Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fully Searchable Archives With Friendly Web Interface at http://marc.free.net.ph To subscribe to the Linux Newbies' List: send "subscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
