Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 11:11:15 -0700 (MST) From: "Russell L. Carter" <rcarter@pinyon.org> To: dbader@eece.unm.edu, dfrasnel@csee.wvu.edu Cc: ports@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Ports category submission (fwd) Message-ID: <199807281811.LAA14805@ConSys.COM>
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|Daniel, | |> Herein lay a "sticky point" which I may or may not catch flak for |> bringing up. The folks at the Beowulf project (and now ExtremeLinux) are |> building computational clusters, some which include facilities for DSM. |> Personally, I define a true "parallel cluster" as something which provides |> not only shared processor power, but also shared memory, a distributed |> filesystem, and (to some degree) a shared userspace. | |I would include DSM, DFS, etc., as parallel computing tools, but I |certainly wouldn't call them a "true 'parallel cluster'". Many current |supercomputers are logically equivalent to a cluster of workstations |with high speed interconnect, where tasks in a program communicate by |passing messages (e.g. MPI). In my research for high performance |computing, I develop the most efficient algorithms which dictate use |of message passing, rather than virtual shared memory, for |performance. This category should be inclusive -- *ANY* tools (above |and beyond standard OS and networking infrastructure) which enable |multiple CPUs to cooperate together to solve a computational problem. And certainly include middleware, for instance move the ORBs out of devel. And queuing systems, too. I build distributed applications now that use both on "clusters", which in some cases run over things like SCI. Russell To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-ports" in the body of the message
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