[Beowulf] mobos/chipsets for small Athlon64-based cluster
Mikhail Kuzminsky
kus at free.net
Tue Jun 14 11:06:38 PDT 2005
I need to build very small and cheap Athlon64 (not FX)-based
(i.e. w/single CPU nodes) GiGE cluster. The processors planned are
Athlon64 3200+ Socket939 w/1 Gbyte/s "bus".
The problem is in preferred Linux x86-64 versions: only SuSE 9.0 and
9.1 are officially "available" for some binary application.
Of course, we need only minimal graphics; SATA drives are not
necessary.
The choice is 1st of all between chipsets; for mobos available on
market
(as I understand) there is nVidia nForce3 (nForce 4 has "more high
requirements to the kernel", I beleive) and VIA K8T800 Pro.
The mobos analyzed are MSI K8N Neo2(nForce 3) or Gigabyte (like GA-K8V
Ultra939 w/VIA chipset).
The question is about support of this chipsets for SuSE 9.0/9.1
kernels
(i.e. for 2.4.21 - SuSE 9.0 or 2.6.x for SuSE 9.1). Formally I have
no needs to have support of all the chipset features (see above).
But nVidia wrote, for example, that kernel 2.4.21 is "too old" for
nForce3 (IDE will not work), it's necessary minimum 2.4.23, so the
standard SuSE 9.0 installation (if I'm correct) simple will not work.
So I'll be very appreciate in any information about possible "SuSE
kernels" for the chipsets I said above.
Yours
Mikhail Kuzminsky
Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry
Moscow
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