[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of O. Hartmann
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 7:50 AM
To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: High performance computing on FreeBSD
FreeBSd is now since 1996 my companion in scientific computing and
related server systems and also my favorite operating system
for every network stuff, firewalls and desktop systems I ever used.
Now going ahaed with 64Bit, FreeBSD 6.X has been canceled for desktop
systems due to the lack of a working JAVA in native 64Bit and
especially a working native 64 Bit OpenOffice environment.
Nevertheless, the experience of our group and especially of mine with
several flavours of Linux, used at our computer center and
its network performance and stability in comparison to FreeBSD's over
the
same time period let me tend to ask for a FreeBSD based high
performance computer cluster more than such one founded on a Linux
distribution. But there are some open issues and those need
to be discussed deeper.
First targets SMP/Node performance. I was very curious about
SCHED_ULE when introduced in FreeBSD 5.X and was said to deliver a
performance
boost on SMP boxes. I'm still waiting for that to come true,
every SMP scaling benchmark that has been taken in our computer center
said Linux has the better SMP performance (on the same Opteron
hardware,
but I do not have specific details about that, sorry).
Next point is the intercommunication of nodes. Infiniband or with
special Hypertransport coupplings nodes will be able to
communicate very fast. GBit LAN will be the least option, so the
question is whether
plans for or ready solutions for the node connections are underway.
The last question refers to Fortran. Well, most of our
scientists still work with Fortran77 or Fortran90/95 and it is hard to
bring
them towards C/C++, so the existence of good Fotran compiler will be
essential. GCC 4.1/4.2 isn't standard in FreeBSD 6.X but many of other
FreeBSD users
told me they use the port's gcc 4.X very successful. But I
feel better when the new GNU compiler collection will be the standard
for
FreeBSD. This may sound weird for some of yours, but I like the ease
of upgrading software in FreeBSD which has reached a very, very high
standard over
the past 10 years (and it isn't comparable to jarsh weirdness I
experienced with Linux, Solaris or Windows). So, utilizing standard
ports and the base compiler collection gives a very stable and high
quality platform - in my opinion.
All right, this above mentioned fundamentals should be the
basis for a small cluster system for numerical research.
I still looking for benchmark tests, pro and contra regarding
BSD/Linux (except the existence of better compiler software for Linux)
and the
state of development of high performance node interconnect and
designated driver software.
Target hardware will be a four or six node Opteron/Athlon64 platform
with dual socket/dual core chips, with 4 or 8 GB local RAM and 200 GB
local SATA disk drives, but main disk array will be RAID
system attached via GBit LAN or, if possible, faster. The big question
will remain in
how the nodes should be interconnected and what kind of OS
will be able to handle a specific interconnect (HTX/Infiniband).
In the case my questions are to unspecific or naiv, please excuse
that.
Oliver
It would seem to me that such a project wouldn't be too hard, but it
would take time, equipment, and expertise. If your center works with
several other like-thinking centers then you could probably pool some
combination of money, equipment and donated labor to such a project. If
you had these resources lined up, my guess is that might get some
additional help from one or more of the technical mailing lists
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/eresources.htm
l#ERESOURCES-MAIL
For example, hackers, amd64, or ia64.
It would be really nice to have FreeBSD be the unquestioned leader in
high performance computing.
-gayn
Bristol Systems Inc.
714/532-6776
www.bristolsystems.com
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