From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 19 18:09:16 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 25ADD1065679 for ; Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:09:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from chuckr@chuckr.org) Received: from mail7.sea5.speakeasy.net (mail7.sea5.speakeasy.net [69.17.117.9]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 076808FC2D for ; Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:09:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from chuckr@chuckr.org) Received: (qmail 5616 invoked from network); 19 Mar 2008 18:09:15 -0000 Received: from april.chuckr.org (chuckr@[66.92.151.30]) (envelope-sender ) by mail7.sea5.speakeasy.net (qmail-ldap-1.03) with AES256-SHA encrypted SMTP for ; 19 Mar 2008 18:09:15 -0000 Message-ID: <47E1558A.2030107@chuckr.org> Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:03:54 -0400 From: Chuck Robey User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (X11/20071107) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jeremy Chadwick References: <47DF1045.6050202@chuckr.org> <20080318082816.GA74218@eos.sc1.parodius.com> <47E146F9.5060105@chuckr.org> <20080319172213.GA28075@eos.sc1.parodius.com> In-Reply-To: <20080319172213.GA28075@eos.sc1.parodius.com> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.5 OpenPGP: id=F3DCA0E9; url=http://pgp.mit.edu Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: FreeBSD-Hackers Subject: Re: remote operation or admin X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:09:16 -0000 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 01:01:45PM -0400, Chuck Robey wrote: >> What is most important in my considerations are, how might it to possible >> to stretch our present smp software to be able to extend the management >> domains to cover multiple computers? Some sort of a bridge here, because >> there is no software today (that I'm awarae of, and that sure leaves a huge >> set of holes) that lets you manage the cores as separate computers) so that >> maybe today I might be able to have an 8 or 10 core system, and maybe >> tomorrow look at the economic and software possibility of having a 256 core >> system. I figure that there would need to be some tight reins on latency, >> and you would want some BIGTIME comm links, I dunno, maybe not be able to >> use even Gigabit ethernet, maybe needing some sort of scsi bus linkage, >> something on that scale? Or, is Fiber getting to that range yet? >> >> Anyhow, is it even remotely posible for us to be able to strech our present >> SMP software (even with it's limitation on word size to limit the range to >> 32 processors) to be able to jump across machines? That would be one hell >> of a huge thing to consider, now wouldn't it? > > Ahh, you're talking about parallel computing, "clustering", or "grid > computing". The Linux folks often refer to an implementation called > Beowulf: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_%28computing%29 > > I was also able to find these, more specific to the BSDs: > > http://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/myths.html#clustering > http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-cluster/2006-June/000292.html > http://people.freebsd.org/~brooks/papers/bsdcon2003/fbsdcluster/ > Well, I am, and I'm not, if you could answer me one quiestion, then I would probably know for sure. What is the difference between our SMP and the general idea of clustering, as typified by Beowulf? I was under the impression I was talking about seeing the possibility of moving the two closer together, but maybe I'm confused in the meanings? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (FreeBSD) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFH4VWKz62J6PPcoOkRAtxnAJoDKlh4EgbL17TLUuH3gEDCwt4u9ACePFGh dWFantC9QyS5g9FJh80wXNI= =viHY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----