Re: FreeBSD software to create super computer ?

2002-11-30 Thread Jens Rehsack
Marc G. Fournier wrote:

I'm really growing tired of reading articles talking abot so and so
creating a super computer of 1400 CPUs running Linux ... latest one I read
was one that HP setup ...

... is there software available for FreeBSD that can do this, or is this
something we are being left behind in?


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Some, eg:
net/mpich: Message Passing Interface (MPI) Library
devel/distcc: Distribute compilation of C(++) code acrosss machines on a 
network

Depends on what you want to do.
You could also port beowulf :-)

Jens
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Re: FreeBSD software to create super computer ?

2002-11-30 Thread Kent Stewart
On Saturday 30 November 2002 12:22 pm, Jens Rehsack wrote:
 Marc G. Fournier wrote:
  I'm really growing tired of reading articles talking abot so and
  so creating a super computer of 1400 CPUs running Linux ...
  latest one I read was one that HP setup ...
 
  ... is there software available for FreeBSD that can do this, or
  is this something we are being left behind in?
 
 
  To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message

 Some, eg:
 net/mpich: Message Passing Interface (MPI) Library
 devel/distcc: Distribute compilation of C(++) code acrosss machines
 on a network

 Depends on what you want to do.
 You could also port beowulf :-)

I thought at some point that beowulf was a port or would run on 
FreeBSD but couldn't find it right now. Another one is 
/usr/ports/net/pvm for Parallel Virtual Machine.

It depends on how they did it. If you have 1400 cpus running 1400 
copies of the OS, you haven't done much. What Cray (don't know what 
their name is now) did was have 1 cpu run the OS and tell the other 
1399 what to do. Cray in their large cpu machines used Alphas as 
their cpus because they would run a program and duplicate output from 
one of the mainframe Crays with 16-32 cpus. You sort of had one slug 
and 1399 dragsters that only had computation on their minds. 

A compiler that generates code for a pvm environment is something 
else. Stacking up cpus is only a few % points in the process of 
generating something useful. What I always wanted was something that 
had 4 or 5 separate computers and would run something in 1/4 or 1/5 
the time. What you usually see is something that will run 4 or 5 jobs 
as truly parallel processes but all of them ran equally slowly. Sort 
of like running seti on an SMP.

A couple of years ago someone in one of the university computing 
centers built a parallel system using FreeBSD. They had a web page 
with images of their computer lab. I couldn't find the URL to it 
right now. 

A monte carlo program that I used in the past before I retired comes 
with mods to run under pvm. You could start a job running and get 
results on the same day instead of waiting 2 or 3 days for it to 
finish.

Kent

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Kent Stewart
Richland, WA

http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html


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Re: FreeBSD software to create super computer ?

2002-11-30 Thread Glenn Johnson
On Sat, Nov 30, 2002 at 04:10:16PM -0400, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

 I'm really growing tired of reading articles talking abot so and so
 creating a super computer of 1400 CPUs running Linux ... latest one I
 read was one that HP setup ...
 
 ... is there software available for FreeBSD that can do this, or is
 this something we are being left behind in?

I am not sure what the HP setup is; can you provide a reference?

In general, FreeBSD can be set up as a Beowulf style cluster or
supercomputer just as well as Linux can.  The only advantage I can
think of that Linux has in this area, besides publicity and support from
heavy weights like IBM and HP, is there is work being done on a parallel
file system for Linux clusters.  Although, an NAS or SAN system would
also work and would be OS independent.

-- 
Glenn Johnson
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Re: FreeBSD software to create super computer ?

2002-11-30 Thread Christian Weisgerber
Marc G. Fournier [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 I'm really growing tired of reading articles talking abot so and so
 creating a super computer of 1400 CPUs running Linux ... latest one I read
 was one that HP setup ...

I think the people who jabber about clusters need a reality check.

At BSDCon, Hubert Feyrer gave a talk Clustering NetBSD.
http://2002.eurobsdcon.org/papers/feyrer.pdf

Folks, go and read it.  Yes, it's boring.  That's the point.  Although
this was a particular ad-hoc project, I think it is representative
in many ways.  Clusters aren't general purpose tools.  They can be
used to develop highly specific solutions to unique problems of a
certain type.  And there are no solutions out of the box.

If you have an actual use for a cluster, you can also set one up.

-- 
Christian naddy Weisgerber  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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