[Beowulf] Opteron/Athlon Clustering

[Jonathan Michael Nowacki]

  A couple of questions.  Is it possible to have a cluster of Athlons and
a cluster of Opterons and use them as a whole for 32 bit computing and use
the Opterons separately for 64 bit computing?  We currently are using 37
Athlons running Rocks(Linux) and PBS (Portable Batch Systems), and are
currently looking into buying a cluster of Opterons.

Also, the people I work for are very wary about buying anything from
anybody but big name companies like Dell, Compaq/HP, SGI, and IBM.  They
are worried about total cost of ownership if something breaks.  The only
problem is none of these companies sells rack-mount Opterons.  What is a
good company to buy rack-mount (dual and quad) Opterons from?

  Thank you for your help,
        Jonathan M Nowacki