[Beowulf] Similar to a multi CPU machine?

[Jake Thebault-Spieker]

So, does the openMosix 2.6 development branch function correctly? I understand it's not considered stable as of yet, but for my purposes will it work? I supposed I could use 2.4, I'd prefer 2.6 though. Do you have any other suggestions? Would running an Xserver still be limited to one CPU though? Like if I wanted to run icewm, it would be limited to a max of 166Mhz, but firefox inside of icewm would also have ~166Mhz? Is that correct?




On Monday 14 November 2005 07:20 am, you wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Nov 2005, Jake Thebault-Spieker wrote:
> > I've heard of many of these(Scyld, OpenMosix, etc.) Since this is how it
> > will work, will I be able to use these 6 machines as a workstation? I
> > understand that the CPU power will be next to none, and I have read your
> > book about overhead, and feasability and so forth. Having not done the
> > calculations, I have a pretty good feeling that my computers will not
> > meet the standards for them to actually be useful. I'm a high school
> > student, and would like a multi-CPU machine to play w/, but I don't want
> > to spend the money. Thanks again.
>
> To use the six machines "as a workstation" will probably require
> OpenMosix -- that permits you to login to one machine's console and just
> run jobs.  Those jobs will then automigrate onto nodes, with network
> socket connections established to pipe e.g. stdin, stdout, open file I/O
> back to the master node transparently.  For embarrassingly parallel
> tasks -- independent runs of some background job -- this will probably
> be "reasonably" efficient.  For graphics intensive tasks, for tasks with
> a lot of I/O, it probably will be less efficient or even INefficient --
> you add network overhead on top of the already nontrivial I/O overhead
> and a different form of virtual parallelism might be called for that
> permits the usage of local disk resources (for example) rather than
> always writing to a virtualized local disk that then is socket-forwarded
> back to the master host and turned in to a real disk write at that end,
> especially if the master is running many copies of a similar/identical
> task so that its disk AND network subsystems are constantly colliding
> and nodes are having to wait in line (blocking the calling application
> in the meantime).
>
> So sure, give OM a try.  If nothing else, it will be a learning
> experience for you -- don't worry too much about whether or not the
> computers will be "useful" per se or whether you could do better to just
> buy a new AMD-64 motherboard unless or until your task is worth
> real money.  Otherwise "useful" is defined mostly by whether or not you
> have fun with it, how much you learn from doing it.
>
>      rgb

-- 
Numbers rule the Universe.
	--The Pythagoreans

Carpe Aptenodytes(Seize the Penguins),
Jake Thebault-Spieker
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