[Beowulf] Good demo applications for small, slow cluster

Andrew M.A. Cater amacater at galactic.demon.co.uk
Thu Aug 22 13:43:16 PDT 2013


On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 02:03:57PM -0400, Prentice Bisbal wrote:
> 
> On 08/21/2013 12:45 PM, Douglas Eadline wrote:
> >> Sorts in general.. Good idea.
> >>
> >> Yes, we'll do a distributed computing bubble sort.
> >>
> >> Interesting, though.. There are probably simple algorithms which are
> >> efficient in a single processor environment, but become egregiously
> >> inefficient when distributed.
> > e.g. The NAS parallel suite has an integer sort (IS) that is
> > very latency sensitive.
> >
> > For demo purposes, nothing beats parallel rendering.
> > There used to be a PVM and MPI POVRay packages
> > that demonstrated faster completion times as more nodes were
> > added.
> >
> Simple Mandelbrot fractal generation is good, too. I remember doing an 
> MPI Mandelbrot fractal program as a student back in the day. It's really 
> useful, because you can visually see the speed up as you add more cores.
> 
> A quick google of 'MPI Mandelbrot" showed many interesting hits on this 
> topic.
> 
> Prentice
> 
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I'd suggest this as the most straightforward - it was the one thing that interested me enough to move 
me to buy a 386, then a 586 .... and to join this list, however many years ago.

I've never, ever, regretted joining the list or following smart people who are _far_ more expert than
I will ever be. 

Andrew



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