Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 09:09:36 -0400 (EDT) From: "Ron G. Minnich" <rminnich@Sarnoff.COM> To: Douglas Carmichael <dcarmich@mcs.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-smp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Building parallel "Beowulf-style" supercomputers with FreeBSD Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.971006085029.12299B-100000@terra> In-Reply-To: <199710042258.RAA00924@dcarmich.pr.mcs.net>
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On Sat, 4 Oct 1997, Douglas Carmichael wrote: > Is there any way one can build large "Beowulf-like" clusters >with FreeBSD and its SMP functionality? > Anyone built such a beast? well, yeah, i built such a beast and have had it running since 1994. Lots of pc clusters went up about that time, including beowulf. See the web page www.sarnoff.com:8000. This cluster paid for itself in well under a year, with real money mind you, not internal funny money accounting. It's quite nice. There's nothing very special about a beowulf: it's cheap PCs running linux. There's some value added in additional GSFC-written software, but not to the level that differentiates it in a big way. Beowulf is a special instance of a general idea, the compute cluster. People have been building compute clusters for almost ten years, some of them using up to 300 processors. (some names: Fermilabs; SCRI; an interesting site in Alabama of all places; Sun Labs [Mica]. All built 128+ processor clusters at least five years ago). A cluster based on FreeBSD would I suppose have to have a different name, but we've done a lot of computing over the last three years with such a cluster: works fine. To my regret, FreeBSD dropped a nice opportunity a few years back to have the first real distributed shared memory on a free Unix when I offered them MNFS, but them's the breaks. That distinction went to Linux instead. Beowulf is currently using my ZOUNDS DSM, but are in the process of rolling their own. I've checked theirs out and don't like it: it uses a model I abandoned as too inflexible 6 years ago. I'm sticking with ZOUNDS. Go for it. Oh yeah if you want the latest ZOUNDS let me know. The earlier version would not compile on 2.2 due to some #include stupidity on my part. I'll try to get the latest one out to the web page ASAP. Don't forget to pick a catchy name. That's at least as important as what you do. ron Ron Minnich |Java: an operating-system-independent, rminnich@sarnoff.com |architecture-independent programming language (609)-734-3120 |for Windows/95 and Windows/NT on the Pentium ftp://ftp.sarnoff.com/pub/mnfs/www/docs/cluster.html
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