[Beowulf] Re: Beowulf Digest, Vol 43, Issue 37

[David Mathog]

Tim Cutts <tjrc at sanger.ac.uk> wrote


> I've heard of people making clusters out of Alphas running Linux  
> before - can't remember where, but I did see someone had done it.

I used to have a 9 node DS10 cluster running linux.  Replaced it
ages ago with a 20 node Athlon MP 2200+ cluster.  Each replacement
node was faster for the sorts of code we run here (integer heavy,
BLAST etc.) than the DS10 nodes.  And that was years ago. An
Opteron or Core Duo would be scads faster yet.  Which is a long
winded way of saying it probably doesn't make sense to build
a cluster of Alpha's these days, no matter which OS you use.

That said, the one thing that was quite nice about the DS10s was that
they held their value very well.  In fact, about half the price of
the replacement cluster was obtained by selling the DS10s.  Now this
was before the Alphacide, and it was a long time ago, but it may still
be that there is a market for the pile of Alphas the original poster has
on hand, in which case the best course is probably to sell those
machines and buy as many modern x86 machines as possible with the proceeds.

Regards,

David Mathog
mathog at caltech.edu
Manager, Sequence Analysis Facility, Biology Division, Caltech