[Beowulf] What can a HS student do with a small Beowulf?

[Todd Patton]

On the subject of computational clusters, I personally get the picture 
that most of the subscribers on this list, and such users of the 
computational clusters, have more of a background in parallel 
programming with science applications, as opposed to network and systems 
administration.  Is it the norm for the list that the cluster manager, 
administrator, builder, programmer, and user roles are played by the 
same person(s)? Should a high chool student that really wants to pursue 
a career in computational clusters follow a programming path in computer 
science or major in engineering or science, - with a minor in computer 
science?



Thanks,
/usr/Todd
Systems Analyst & Administration

 

Jess Cannata wrote:

> Beowulf clusters (computational clusters) are much more useful if you 
> have a problem that needs a lot of processing power/time and that can 
> be broken apart either as a distributed or parallel job. Molecular 
> modeling, rendering, and protein/gene searching are some good examples 
> of this type of problem. There are other types of clusters such as, 
> high-availability web and database clusters that serve different 
> purposes than Beowulf clusters.
>
> Of course, I think that there is educational value to building a test 
> cluster even if you have no computationally intensive jobs to run on 
> it. It can definitely help you to better understand Linux and its 
> associated packages. And who knows, it might even get you interested 
> in parallel programming.
>
> Jess
>
> sNAAPS eLYK wrote:
>
>> Hello, I'm Kyle Spaans, finishing my last year of highschool in 
>> Northern Ontario, Canada, and I'm a budding Linux user. Also being a 
>> computer geek I've got lots of computers lying around my house. Since 
>> I'll soon have the summer ahead of me before heading off to 
>> Post-Secondary [uWaterloo], I've got one quick question.
>>
>> Hypothetically speaking, I manage to get a small number of computers 
>> together in a working cluster, but now what can I do with it? 
>> Folding at Home is my main computing hobby, but I already know what it 
>> won't take advantage in a cluster. I also don't do any kind of 
>> rendering or any large scale content creation, nor is writing 
>> computer programs a skill that I have.
>>
>> So, as far as I can see, hosting game servers or a few other kinds of 
>> servers [ventrilo, web, ftp, streaming media], and having a sense of 
>> pride in accomplishment are the only things that I'll get by building 
>> a beowulf cluster. Is this more or less true, or am I missing something?
>>
>> PS - if there is info about this that I obviously failed to find in 
>> my searches, please tell me so!
>>
>> Thanks for your time!
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
>> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit 
>> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>>   
>
> _______________________________________________
> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org
> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit 
> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
>