Linux clusters, beowulf, ATM, etc ...

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Linux Beowulf clustering ..

What? In short a series of computers, parallel linked together thru a high speed network acting as one!
Cluster vs Beowulf: A cluster is meant to deliver reliability and NOT high computing speed unlike a Beowulf cluster!
Connected to the outside world thru a high speed connection it can be used as a remote super computer.
Software: There does not exist somme program/package called Beowulf. However there are several pieces of software drifting around, none of them being essential! PVM, MPI, MPICH, LAM, DIPC, Mosix, BERT, etc.. find it out yourself, this is not Beowulf on a dish 8-))
Will my software run faster? NO or maybe, if you put somme work to it! You need to split your programm into parralel tasks that communicate using MPI or PVM or network sockets or SysV IPC. Then You recompile it. Or you can run the same programm a few thousand times, Duh..
Multi-threaded & shared memory: Even multi-threaded software won't automatically get a speedup. Multi-threaded soft assumes shared-memory!! There are somme distributed shared memory packages under development (DIPC, Mosix), but even these access patterns could result in loss of performance.
Why do people use Beowulfs and does anyone have a db that runs on it? Either becourse they think its cool (and it is 8-)) or becourse they get supercomputer performance for a fraction the price of a traditional Cray. And NO there is no sutch db, maybe Oracle or Informix migth do this someday.
What, how, why:

• Remote control thru telnet for every node, they don't even need a video card!
• Dual processors for every node, so CPU1 can work while CPU2 handels all the network interupts.
• Diferent types of nodes? Only if you go for a free supercomputer or if you use different network/cluster sections with all the same nodes. This is for management & troubleschooting!
• You can use 2 x 100Mb ethernetcards, each 100Mb uni-direcetional, and multiplex them.

ATM: Better than ethernet will be ATM. Then again, ATM is just in pre-alpha stage under Linux!
 

Then again ... who am I to tell you how to make one ... I'm a nobody withouth a cluster 8-((
 

Links:

ATM on Linux  http://lrcwww.epfl.ch/linux-atm/
The Beowulf project at CESDIS  http://www.beowulf.org/
The Beowulf underground  http://www.beowulf-underground.org/
Cluster 2000  http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/informatik/RA/cluster2000/
Extreme Linux  http://www.extremelinux.org/
PARL at Clemson university  http://www.parl.clemson.edu/

Somme successful Beowulf clusters..

SWARM  http://www.cs.orst.edu/swarm/
The Stone SouperComputer  http://stonesoup.esd.ornl.gov/
The Hive  http://newton.gsfc.nasa.gov/thehive/
Avalon at los Almos  http://cnls.lanl.gov/avalon/
 

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