[Beowulf] A fairly simple question

[C. Ahmet MERCAN]

hi;

if you just want to learn parallel programming, of course  you can run 
multiple mpi task on single cpu. But this solution does not gives you 
any experiences about real cluster administration / programming. because 
it does not need to share users and files using a server. also you can 
not aware authentication (such as ssh) problems. and also you can't 
learn network settings. I said that it is simple solution because you 
can try what you want without worrying about system settings. if it mess 
up, you can restart/reinstall your virtual system, without breaking your 
other daily jobs.

these advantages are for only educational purpose (as i said 
previously). You can't expect performance from virtual cluster as like 
as real one.

regards...

Cem Ahmet MERCAN


Mark Hahn wrote:
>>Simple solution is single pc with virtual PCs. it works properly as 
> 
> 
> I disagree.  you can always run multiple MPI worker tasks on a single 
> CPU - you won't see speedup, of course, but you can work on your programming
> logic pretty reasonably.  I don't see why virtual PCs would offer any 
> advantage over this.  the next step is to use a few of real PCs as RGB
> suggests - not only do you start to see speedup, but you can play with 
> the reasons why speedup is not perfect.  however, I think just two PCs
> is a useful cluster - there's no big reason to have a separate master,
> and even with 2 boxes, you can learn.
> 
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