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Date:      Wed, 26 Jan 2000 07:56:42 +0100 (CET)
From:      Micke Josefsson <mj@isy.liu.se>
To:        sbcorey <sbcorey@azstarnet.com>
Cc:        FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   RE: Beowulf on FreeBSD ?
Message-ID:  <XFMail.000126075642.mj@isy.liu.se>
In-Reply-To: <388E8439.568EF564@azstarnet.com>

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On 26-Jan-00 sbcorey wrote:
> I was looking at the Beowulf project at http://www.beowulf.org/ and
> wondered if anyone has tried to do this with FreeBSD?


A beowulf is a merely a bunch of computer connected in some way defined to
perform a common task. 

The simplest beowulf may be to create a shell script on one computer that use
rsh to load work onto other computers. If the task at hand is easy to partition
into (equally sized) parts, then the rsh way is very easy and requires no
special programming.

On the other end of the scale you can use such special libraries as MPICH (see
ports) to make message passing between all your machines transparent to you.
MPICH distributes the data to a number of predefined machines (defined in a
list), and contains very powerful functions for gathering and distributing data
between the individual boxes.

A living example of the feasibility of FreeBSD Beowulf is the movie The Matrix.
All its renderings were done in FreeBSD run on 32 Dell boxes with dual 450MHz
PII's.

Cheers,
/Micke

PS. Install MPICH from ports onto two machines. The port contains some small
test programs, to give you an idea of it power.
----------------------------------
Michael Josefsson, MSEE
mj@isy.liu.se

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