[Beowulf] help on building Beowulf

[Li, Bo]

According to my experiences to run HPC applications in Shanghai Super Computing Center. Myrinet interconnection brought to many failure with even a small application. All users are crazy with the interconnections and we had to restart the applications once and once again. I am not sure if there were improvement when Myrinet involved. During my staying there for three months, nothing done by the Myrinet when guys from Dawning called them for help. Sorry, if I put too many private opinions on the case.
Regards,
Li, Bo

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Hahn" <hahn at mcmaster.ca>
To: "Li, Bo" <libo at buaa.edu.cn>
Cc: "?? ?" <rundongwan at yahoo.com.cn>; "Beowulf Mailing List" <beowulf at beowulf.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 1:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] help on building Beowulf


>> I don't think Myrinet is a good idea.
> 
> never?
> 
>> If you budget is not a problem, try QLogic's products or Mellanox's
>> ones. Myrinet maybe cheap but in low reliability.
> 
> I'm surprised to hear this - are you talking about 2g or 10g?
> the list price of myri 2g is about $450/port (nic+switch+cable)
> 
> I'm also interested to hear your statistics on reliability. 
> my organization has ~10 myri 2g clusters (600-650 nodes),
> installed over the past 4 years, and have had few problems.
> 
> we don't have any myri 10G hardware - have you had problems with 
> their 10G nics or switches?
> 
>> I prefer to use opensource software with our re-development for our
>> projects. And generally, re-development will give us flexibility to manage
>> algorithms and optimizations.
> 
> it's all about your research focus.  if you're pushing the edge of 
> computational technique, you look to full-custom software.  if your 
> computation is mainly just an adjunct to lab work, you look for an
> shrink-wrapped application (which, like it or not, are more commonly
> commercial - consider gaussian vs nwchem/etal)
> 
>>>  I am thinking of building a Beowulf of 17 dual-core nodes, one head node
> 
> any purchase today should definitely consider quad-core cpus.
> 
> regards, mark hahn.