Advice on Cluster Hardware.

[Velocet]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 02:53:35PM -0600, Ivan Pulleyn's all...
> 
> Ooh, didn't realize this was out yet! This is a preferable board
> compared to the Asus A7M266-D because it trades a useless C-Media
> sound chip for an integrated 3COM 10/100.
> 
> The main quirk I noticed when playing w/the Asus board: NO USB (not
> even 1.x) support. If, for some reason, you need it you are forced to
> use a USB2.0 PCI card. The Tyan boards have good old-fashioned USB1.x
> support on-board. This means you basically can't use USB console
> switches with the Asus.

The Tyan Tiger has serial console built in. Rox. THe only thing you
cant do is 3 finger salute (at least I couldnt find it in the manual). You
can even hit F2 to get into bios setup, and I tweaked my intel PXE boot
card's bios settings with it as well. Rather nice. Saves you the cost
of a videocard too.

I've noticed however, with the ASUS A7V board (single socket A) that it
doesnt support bridged PCI cards properly. We had no end of trouble with
a DEC 4 port card in that board - replaced the board and not a problem.

I've also heard that bridged PCI cards have trouble with SMP boards -
anyone got info on that?

/kc

> 
> Ivan...
> 
> 
> On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Alcino Dall Igna Junior wrote:
> 
> > You could stick with Tyan, if you prefer, using the TigerMPX
> > (S2466N), that as the Asus, provide a fastether NIC on board
> > and with the same 66MHz PCI, and the same optional nonECC
> > nonbuffered DDR if with to 2 memory banks.
> > 
> > Alcino.
> > 
> > On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Ivan Pulleyn wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > Rather than a Tyan TigerMP motherboard, consider the newly released
> > > Asus A7M266-D. It's based on the AMD 760MPX which means you get a
> > > 66Mhz (as opposed to 33Mhz) 64bit PCI bus. This could become important
> > > if you switch to Myrinet or some other fast interconnect. In addition,
> > > you'll have the option of regeristered or unregistered ECC
> > > memory. While I recommend registered (and it's required for higher
> > > capacities) it's nice to have a choice. Also, there's quite a number
> > > of 760MPX boards coming out soon so you'll have more options as you
> > > grow your cluster.
> > > 
> > > Ivan...
> > > 
> > > 
> > > On Tue, 5 Feb 2002, Alberto Ramos wrote:
> > > 
> > > > 
> > > >   Here in a university of Madrid, we are designing a Beowulf for paralel
> > > > computing in QCD. We will begin with a small cluster to see the performance
> > > > and later try with other comunications, like mirynet.
> > > > 
> > > >   The Hardware will be 4 nodes each consisting of:
> > > >   
> > > >   - 2xAMD MP 1800+ CPU
> > > >   - 1x512MB RAM DDR
> > > >   - 1xTyan tiger MP
> > > >   - 2x3-COM 905B NIC
> > > >   - 20GB HD
> > > >   
> > > >   The master node has 1GB of RAM DDR, and one aditional HD to use as /home.
> > > >   
> > > >   The conection will be trought a HP Procurve Switch 408 with 8 ports to use
> > > > Chanel Bonding.
> > > > 
> > > >   Now the questions:
> > > >   
> > > >   - Any known problems with the hardware?
> > > >   - Are the NIC and the Switch good choices?
> > > >   - Will the Intel FORTRAN 90 Compiler work with this hardware.
> > > >   
> > > >   Thank you very much for your time.
> > > >   
> > > >   Alberto.
> > > >   
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
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> > > > 
> > > 
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
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> > 
> 
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-- 
Ken Chase, math at velocet.ca  *  Velocet Communications Inc.  *  Toronto, CANADA