[Beowulf] Re: SMPs + One processor machines = Heterogeneous Cluster

[Cally K]

hi again

I found this website from lam-mpi on heterogeneous cluster, and it kinda
answers my question but just to be on the safe side, i would like to know
the response from the mailing list users.

http://www.lam-mpi.org/faq/category11.php3


On 4/3/08, Mark Kosmowski <mark.kosmowski at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Message: 8
> > Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 21:35:34 +0800
> > From: "Cally K" <kalpana0611 at gmail.com>
> > Subject: [Beowulf] SMPs + One processor machines = Heterogeneous
> >        Cluster
> > To: beowulf at beowulf.org
> > Message-ID:
> >        <b05971d10804020635u6d41cfb8v115deea93a6499d6 at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> >
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > Thanks for the previous answers to my question, did not expect that
> kinda
> > flow of information and it proved to be helpful in my research. I have a
> > different question and I hope I can get some nice feedback.
> >
> > I am dealing with heterogeneous cluster in my research. I am a novice
> when
> > it comes to networking, and have only been around with cluster for about
> a
> > year. Anyway, from my previous question, and after doing some reading,
> can I
> > say that dual cores and quad cores are known as SMPs.?
> >
> > And would 1 say that, a cluster that has machines with 1 processor (
> etc.
> > Pentium 4 )and 2 SMPS( it can be quad or dual ) but all belonging to one
> > family ( intel for example ) -- can I say that the cluster is a
> > heterogeneous cluster.
>
> My limited (and perhaps incorrect) understanding is that SMP denotes
> more than one processor, regardless the number of cores that the
> processor has.
>
> Heterogenous, to me, implies a cluster of machines running different
> operating systems and/or different architectures.
>
> As an example, my personal is three Opteron systems, each of which has
> two single core CPU's, all running OpenSUSE 10.2 64-bit.  This is a
> homogenous cluster of SMP machines.  I plan to add a dual core, single
> CPU Athlon (64) system to the cluster at some point.  This planned
> machine would (in my opinion) not be SMP (although the more I think
> about it, the more I think I am either wrong or in the minority camp
> about SMP and cores) and the cluster would remain homogenous even if I
> were to put OpenSUSE 11.0 (64 bit) on the system (the new OpenSUSE
> release and my projected budget have similar timescales).
>
> Even if I were to use an Intel Pentium system of whatever nomenclature
> that is instruction compatible with my existing Opterons (the
> difficulty in immediately knowing whether a Pentium chip is 64-bit
> capable or not is one of the reasons I am sticking with AMD) the
> system would remain homogenous.
>
> If, however, I were to add a Sun SPARC machine as a node, now I have a
> heterogenous cluster.  Likewise, if my new Athlon (64) node used
> Solaris (for Intel), the cluster would be heterogenous in my opinion.
>
> My rule of thumb for heterogeneity is whether the programs to be run
> need to be recompiled for a given node.  If all of the nodes can use
> one single compile of all of the codes needed, the cluster is not
> heterogenous.  I guess this would mean that running a 32-bit program
> (I want karma for minding my usage of code vs. program here! :) ) on a
> mixture of 32-bit and 64-bit machines would be homogenous, but if on
> the same cluster, the 32-bit machines ran a 32-bit program and the
> 64-bit machines ran a 64-bit program then that cluster might be
> considered heterogenous.
>
> I hope this at least sparks an interesting conversation,
>
> Mark Kosmowski
>
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