h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi, xyroth!

I noticed across at the LUG that you have a Beowulf cluster... I've been planning to set one up for the last couple of years. To that end my bedroom windowsill is resplendant with seven P66s in slimline cases, and I have a P200MMX and dual P233-MMX lined up for it too, with the option of dual-booting my dual Celeron-533 as the "master" node. What've you got?

There's a lovely "bumper sticker" I want to get from ThinkGeek - "My other computer is a 5000 node Beowulf cluster"

I have a matched set of 32 identical nodes which are 486's, with between 8 & 12 mb of ram, usually about 200mb of hard disk space.

I also have 2 486 servers, a 486 laptop, assorted other 386 & 486 pc's, also pentium 75, 133, 266 (laptop), and also an amd k62 300, as well as assorted other non-pc computers.

I also have sycld beowulf linux installed on the 486 lptop, so that I can familiarise myself with it ready for when I can get good enough network hubs.

If you pop over to my website, there is more details in the beowulf clusters entry (locatable from the site index).

I am currently having a problem finding a good enough driving problem for my cluster. any ideas?

I've got the "Extreme Linux" CD, which has an old kernel set up for clustering. I can get a more modern kernel easily, but the beauty of the "Extreme Linux" release is that it comes bundled with a selection of applications pre-compiled to run on multiple CPUs in a Beowulf environment. I plan to use my cluster as a render farm running the multiprocessor build of POV Raytrace...

Ahhh... I just checked out your site, and see you have a more than passing familiarity with Extreme Linux...

I was surprised you didn't mention the Stone Soupercomputer - one of the best documented Beowulf clusters out there in the "real world"...

(If you haven't seen the site before, do a Google search for "Stone Soupercomputer" and follow the top link...!)

I meant to get back to the stone soupercomputer, but I was prevented by being poisoned by my doctor, and then it slipped my mind. I will try to remedy this before the next publication of my site.

as you have seen, cycld is the sequel to the extreme linux cd, and I will be getting the cluster up and running as soon as I can find the right hubs.

I made a conscious decision to use co-ax for the majority of my networking - terminators are cheaper than hubs!

I plan to set up the first nine machines in a "square topology" - notionally, they will be three rows of three. Each machine will have two network cards connecting it to one "row" and one "column" in this notional grid, giving six networks in all. I've got a *lot* of network cards - every time I've seen a good card for under £5 in the last couple of years, I've bought it... 8)

For some tasks, Beowulf itself has been superceded as a technology - my reference is the O'Reilly book "Building LINUX CLUSTERS" by David HM Spector (ISBN 1-56592-625-0) which lists a selection of free and commercial clustering tools...

I know of some of the technology superseeding parts of the clustering stuff. mosix for example. I will have to get around to upgrading this area of my website (along with all the other bits that need upgrading).