[Beowulf] small file systems

[Robert G. Brown]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2007, Peter St. John wrote:

> Robert,
> That's just the kind of thing I've been looking for, for quite awhile.
> Tricked out to be a compute node (max speed, RAM, Flash, ethernet, but no
> video stuff, or video in, Heaven forbid) it's unit price is $78 in the base
> lot of one thousand; I'd buy a box of ten, which would total $1560 (not
> counting cables etc and whatever I use as file server/head node). So max
> thruput would be 10x 500 MHz, sorta a 5GHz computer for $1600, which is a
> deal, for sufficiently distributable apps, which I got. So thanks, this
> definitely establishes a minimum target for me. The Alpha boxen are free but
> few.

GIYF -- there are a dazzling array of tiny systems out there nowadays.
The little gumstick motherboard was pretty amazing as well.  But I do
like the ones that have built in network and maybe USB/flash.  It looked
like there was a very low end video option on these ones as well, so you
could even make a head for it.

One day I'm going to take my old original 64K motherboard IBM PC chassis
and build a little mini-cluster or something inside.  Turn it into a
"supercomputer".  Then if I can get one of the old green-screen monitors
surplus and yank its guts and replace the screen with a flatpanel, and
put on an old green-screen DOS screensaver.... it will be just like the
good old days.

Of course first my novel has to sell a million or so copies so I can
afford the time.  But at least it "can" at this point -- it finally made
it onto Amazon, and should be on the B&N site in a few more days.  So
Axioms, the beowulf engineering book, and some physics texts are all in
the queue...;-)

    rgb

> Peter
>
>
>
>> ...  It's
>> pretty easy to find functional motherboards this size or smaller for
>> prices as low as $52:
>>
>>
>> http://www.compulab.co.il/x270cm/html/x270-cm-datasheet.htm?gclid=CIX86d3slo4CFR5uUAodVT-jQQ
>>
>> with all the integrated peripherals required to make a nice, little,
>> ...   rgb
>>
>>>
>>
>

-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu