[Beowulf] Question about video/audio

[Mark Hahn]

> So where to start, can i have any thing primary about the beowulf

what do you mean?  there's not much to a beowulf cluster: some machines,
usually running linux, with some sort of network, and usually a shared
filesystem.  usually some sort of job queueing/scheduling system.

there are many ways to start - which is best for you depends on your level
of expertise.  highly integrated systems strive for very simple install 
procedures (where "simple" actually means "don't expect the human to know
anything").  if you're at all familiar with unix/linux, I think it's 
quite instructive to set up a cluster manually (the "human knows best"
approach).  for AV production, you might well not even need MPI: just some
machines, with shared filesystems for convenient acces, and some form of 
job scheduler.  (schedulers run the gamut from very simple to very complex;
my advice is to avoid the latter.  with a high-integration cluster,
it's usually a high-compexity scheduler that's bundled, but then again,
the point is that you can treat it as a black box.  (until it fails or
doesn't do what you want, but that's always the downside to integration.)


> On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 4:25 AM, Jess Cannata <jac67 at georgetown.edu> wrote:
>
>> What do you want to do exactly? Do you already "farm" out portions of your
>> job/task to different machines? Beowulf clusters are already used for tasks
>> that are highly independent and can therefore tolerate heterogeneous
>> clusters (animation rendering is the first one that crosses my mind, but
>> there are others). I'm assuming that your jobs would be similar, so correct
>> me if I am wrong. Send out the details (applications used, time required to
>> run the jobs currently, etc.), and I'm sure you'll get some advice.
>>
>> Jess
>>
>> Linux Mercedes wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I'm wondering if a Beowulf cluster would be a good choice for doing
>>> audio/video production, or if I'm looking for something else.
>>> If it is, I'm curious as to how it would work with a heterogenous
>>> cluster (I have machines with speeds anywhere between 100Mhz and 1Ghz that
>>> I'd like to use, although I do have older ones =])
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Nathan
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
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-- 
operator may differ from spokesperson.	            hahn at mcmaster.ca