[Beowulf] Building new cluster - estimate

[John Hearns]

On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 18:28 -0400, Mark Hahn wrote:
> >
> 
> afaik, their efficiency is maybe 10% better than more routine hardware.
> doesn't really change the big picture.  and high-eff PSU's are available
> in pretty much any form-factor.  choosing lower-power processors (and perhaps
> avoiding fbdimms) will probably save more power than perseverating too much
> on the PSU...

Points very well made Mark.

I'm just passing on some recent good experiences of building clusters
around the size that Ivan wants, and still would highly recommend the
Intel twins. We've built many systems with these, for a range of
applications and have have good experiences.

As a for instance, here is one - admittedly 2.5 times bigger than the
one Ivan is planning (right hand side of the page). As you say (and I've
said further up thread) you have to pay attention to concentrating heat
loads in one rack - hence this one is spread over three racks
http://www.streamline-computing.com/