From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Nov 30 14:39:20 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 67B6637B401 for ; Sat, 30 Nov 2002 14:39:18 -0800 (PST) Received: from rutger.owt.com (rutger.owt.com [204.118.6.16]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D8B0343EC5 for ; Sat, 30 Nov 2002 14:39:17 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kstewart@owt.com) Received: from owt-207-41-94-233.owt.com (owt-207-41-94-233.owt.com [207.41.94.233]) by rutger.owt.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA31436; Sat, 30 Nov 2002 14:39:13 -0800 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" From: Kent Stewart To: Jens Rehsack , "Marc G. Fournier" Subject: Re: FreeBSD software to create "super computer" ? Date: Sat, 30 Nov 2002 14:39:12 -0800 User-Agent: KMail/1.4.3 Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG References: <20021130160800.U6214-100000@hub.org> <3DE91E1A.1070809@liwing.de> In-Reply-To: <3DE91E1A.1070809@liwing.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Message-Id: <200211301439.12732.kstewart@owt.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Saturday 30 November 2002 12:22 pm, Jens Rehsack wrote: > Marc G. Fournier wrote: > > I'm really growing tired of reading articles talking abot so and > > so creating a super computer of 1400 CPUs running Linux ... > > latest one I read was one that HP setup ... > > > > ... is there software available for FreeBSD that can do this, or > > is this something we are being left behind in? > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > > Some, eg: > net/mpich: Message Passing Interface (MPI) Library > devel/distcc: Distribute compilation of C(++) code acrosss machines > on a network > > Depends on what you want to do. > You could also port beowulf :-) I thought at some point that beowulf was a port or would run on=20 FreeBSD but couldn't find it right now. Another one is=20 /usr/ports/net/pvm for Parallel Virtual Machine. It depends on how they did it. If you have 1400 cpus running 1400=20 copies of the OS, you haven't done much. What Cray (don't know what=20 their name is now) did was have 1 cpu run the OS and tell the other=20 1399 what to do. Cray in their large cpu machines used Alphas as=20 their cpus because they would run a program and duplicate output from=20 one of the mainframe Crays with 16-32 cpus. You sort of had one slug=20 and 1399 dragsters that only had computation on their minds.=20 A compiler that generates code for a pvm environment is something=20 else. Stacking up cpus is only a few % points in the process of=20 generating something useful. What I always wanted was something that=20 had 4 or 5 separate computers and would run something in 1/4 or 1/5=20 the time. What you usually see is something that will run 4 or 5 jobs=20 as truly parallel processes but all of them ran equally slowly. Sort=20 of like running seti on an SMP. A couple of years ago someone in one of the university computing=20 centers built a parallel system using FreeBSD. They had a web page=20 with images of their computer lab. I couldn't find the URL to it=20 right now.=20 A monte carlo program that I used in the past before I retired comes=20 with mods to run under pvm. You could start a job running and get=20 results on the same day instead of waiting 2 or 3 days for it to=20 finish. Kent --=20 Kent Stewart Richland, WA http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message