Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 21:01:43 -0500 From: Guy Helmer <ghelmer@scl.ameslab.gov> To: rick hamell <hamellr@dsinw.com> Cc: "Samer, Michael, IN" <Michael.Samer@Ingolstadt.BERTRANDT.com>, "FreeBSD Questions (E-Mail)" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Cluster?! Message-ID: <Pine.SGI.4.10.9905102050470.5064-100000@demios.scl.ameslab.gov> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.990510172247.22496D-100000@dsinw.com>
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On Mon, 10 May 1999, rick hamell wrote: > > Does anyone have experience (on universities or research) with Cluster and > > the efficency? Efficiency depends on the distributed application :-) If your app doesn't require extremely low latency or extremely high bandwidth for its interprocessor communication, then it ought to run well. A sample app that I use for benchmarking runs at 78% efficiency (e.g., 0.78 * 64 * the speed of the app on a single PPro 200) on 64 PPro-200 processors connected with Fast Ethernet (although the PC's are running Linux). Some apps run very well on clusters, and other apps run poorly. > I don't know how much Alphas cost versus regular PCs, but you may > want to take a look at Beowulf. I've heard several reports of people > running it under FreeBSD, including an unconfirmed inside sourse at NASA. > There are several commercial clustering programs also, though I do not > know the name of them off the top of my head. A basic cluster is just a group of PC's connected with a fast network. Since Bill Paul recently added a driver for the NetGear GE620 ($330!) Gigabit Ethernet card to FreeBSD, one can build the cluster around a really fast network for a moderate amount of money. > Anyways if you run several fast PC's PII-400s or so with FreeBSD > in a clusterd environment you should see quite a bit of performance, and > a large cost savings. The best part (IMHO) of using the PCs, you can swap > new ones in and out easily, and be cost-effective at doing so. Or, you can buy a cluster of new systems and distribute the old systems to be used as desktop PC's :-) Guy Helmer, Ph.D. Candidate, Iowa State University Dept. of Computer Science Research Assistant, Ames Laboratory --- ghelmer@scl.ameslab.gov Research Assistant, Dept. of Computer Science --- ghelmer@cs.iastate.edu http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~ghelmer To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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