/. MS vs. university Beowulfs

[graham.mullier at syngenta.com]

Well, you could have a look at http://www.windowsclusters.org/ as pointed
out by one of the slashdotters.

http://www.windowsclusters.org/projects.htm looks the most useful from this
site, if you're trying to find some real info.

Personally I'm not interested in a comparison of a full cluster of linux
nodes vs one of W2K nodes, but of what use can be made, in a corporate
environment, of heterogeneous clusters, pulling in and using desktop compute
cycles, a la seti at home or whatever. Obviously it's a completely different
game, and my main question is whether the return is worth the effort (i.e.
can you get enough unused compute cycles out of desktop machines to make it
worthwhile). The chapter on Condor in "Beowulf cluster computing with Linux"
(ed. Sterling; 2001) implies that it can be worth it.

Any views?

Graham

Graham Mullier
Chemoinformatics Team Leader,
Chemistry Design Group,
Syngenta, Bracknell, RG42 6EY, UK.
direct line: +44 (0) 1344 414163
mailto:Graham.Mullier at syngenta.com


-----Original Message-----
From: Velocet [mailto:math at velocet.ca]
Sent: Fri 22 February 2002 15:34
[...]

Have fun wading through the blind linux advocacy and silly jokes to try
and find any content.

If someone can summarize any real information they grok from this massive
thread (ie how good is computational clustering on M$), please post it here.

/kc