Possbile uses of Beowulf ... ?

[Enigma]

the short answer is no, unless the app is designed to use a parallel
architecture it won't work, if it is code/modified to use PVM/MPI or some
other system then it *could* work, my original plan was for a fast quake 3
machine, then i did the research and found it wasn't possible, but i built
my cluster anyway, I have used my old 486s and in a mad evening i worked
out i would need roughly 100 of these to even come close to the raw
processing power of my t-bird (486dx 33s v.s. t-bird 1ghz), and then there
is the network lbottle neck
to add on, but i built my cluster anyways a s research for myself, but i
only useit to teach myself parallel programming techniques, it does
nothing usefull, 486's just can't crunch that hard :)

if you still want to go ahead it is a good learning experience (well i
think so, but then i'm sad geek anyways :P)

if you want more info or help with getting it running there are some
really helpfull people on the list and some good info around online
(redhat comes with PVM and MPI and scyld is a complete cluster software,
but won't install on small amounts of memory so i can't even try it)

hope this helps

Jez

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Rakhesh Sasidharan wrote:

> Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 16:47:53 +0530 (IST)
> From: Rakhesh Sasidharan <rakhesh at cse.iitd.ernet.in>
> To: beowulf <beowulf at beowulf.org>
> Subject: Possbile uses of Beowulf ... ?
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I was going through the beowulf.org site trying to find general
> information on beowulf's (and I did find lots), but there's something that
> I still am not clear about:
> 
>   Suppose I have 6-7 old machines lying around with me, is there any way I
>   could use something like beowulf techniques to make them into a "super"
>   computer ?  I'm just a non-academic user, and the only use I think I can
>   put this to could be to play games faster, or surfing, or plays mp3s
>   etc ...  Individually, the old machines (486s and above) wouldn't be
>   efficient, so is it possible to combine them together and make things
>   work ?
> 
> I went through a couple of articles etc, and that gave me the impression
> contrary to what I am asking; but still I ask to make sure. :-)  Or maybe
> it is possible to take the source code of normal apps, and beowulf-ify
> them ?
> 
> Regards,
> __
> Rakhesh
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
> 


________________________________________________________

PGP key is here -> http://www.computerbooth.com/pgp.html

* If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the
process of putting them in.