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23 Comments
- bdxphoenix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1meh.
the article isn't all that descriptive, it is pretty much saying 'look i setup a cluster.' no technical details beyond the basics. i also find it curious that the author didn't setup a system to do network installations after the host was setup. to me this seems the best way to make a cluster (or just make a disk image, then set all the machines to that image).
i'd give it half a digg if i could, but i can't so no digg. - catoutfit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1"Could you play modern games using a cluster of old P1s?"
One word...'Bus speed'
Clusters are better for distrubuting large tasks into smaller chunks, such as big mathematical equations or spreading a load ie a web server.
for a graphics related task where you need super fast bus speed (AGP) ethernet isn't going to cut it. - Computer_Kid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Could you play modern games using a cluster of old P1s?
- irq13, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1SirNuke - oh ya, it would be absolutely impractical for home use due to power consumption. Luckily I don’t get the power bills so work so I can’t comment on how bad it would be, but my guess is pretty bad.
Bdxphoenix - A network kick start would be a good idea, but I don’t add nodes often enough for it warrant my time. ;) - FullMetalMonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I have 20 P3s lying around so I might do this!
I wonder if I can have the cluster torrent files? Hmmmmm..... - sdenike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I just wish that I had access to some of the computers in the article.
- Jams, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"One word...'Bus speed'"
- gODfall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Co0l dig...slash who?
- SirNuke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The really great part of the all 'computer cluster' articles is they never mention the power usage. It really won't take very long for the cost of putting together and running a dozen p2s to be much higher than the price of getting someone's two/three year old gaming computer off of eBay.
Sure, it would be a fun project, but the practical to price ratio doesn't get a whole lot lower. - coyforce, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0hopefully we haven't yet come to the point that "old computers" have dvd drives.
- Matt2k, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1It's a completely pointless exercise, except possibly as a "fun" way to kill a weekend for a couple reasons:
1) Which makes more sense, networking a half dozen P3-400s together and spending a few days getting them all up and running or buying a spare 3GHZ chip, motherboards and memory for a few hundred a piece. Unless your time isn't very valuable it doesn't make sense
2) The power required to run all those low end machines will quickly run up your next electricity bill.
3) Now that you've done it.. Now what? How many programs do you have that can be multi threaded, let alone against 20 workstations? - kitejumping, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0sort of useless unless the PCs are somewhat recent and you install gigabit ethernet cards in them...
- lampshade, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Yeah,
the only reason you would want to do this is for practice or for fun on the real thing.
"11. Should I build a cluster of these 100 386s? [1999-05-13]
If it's OK with you that it'll be slower than a single Celeron-333 machine, sure. Great way to learn. "
I have a feeling, though this question uses 386's, that clustering a lot of PII's together just doesn't produce enough computing power for the electric bill. - gryphn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hey, pretty cool! I'll have to try it out and see what I can make from it. Can it make a Beowulf cluster of atomic supermen?
- pedru, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@poet_will
remove the last char ')' and the link will work - rwbaskette, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Once you get all of this hardware working properly in tandem, now all you need is enough time to write a distributed application to take advantage of it!
Wow! I love using Beowulf Clusters for... - Tyrekicker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think he needs to put his webserver on a beowolf cluster to handle digg traffic.
- cyburdine, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0while I appreciate the article, the fact that it was more than 1 paragraph long, immediately threw it out of the "Easy Way" category...
download (here: http://openmosix.sourceforge.net/instant_openmosix_clusters.html)
burn
boot...
fold at home, run seti, waste electricity... or just set it up once... just to say you did... - poet_will, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0cyburdine, that link was bad for me. got a 404..
- tim949, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0FullMetalMonkey wrote: "I have 20 P3s lying around so I might do this! I wonder if I can have the cluster torrent files? Hmmmmm....."
This info is not really an answer to your question, but I thought you might be interested... The latest version of Rocks (the cluster distro mentioned in this article) uses a new Avalanche installer, which utilizes BitTorrent... So when you PXE boot 100+ (or even 1000+) nodes at a time, Torrents are used to efficiently pull the O/S from multiple hosts in parallel. In the past, this was always a major problem for large cluster installs -- they had to be cycled on in groups or else nodes would hang when trying to pull their O/S from the head node. - Philoushka, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0oh Jezum Crow. I thought I left Slashdot because I hated seeing this story.
- motionblur, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Dugg, just for the Slashdot reference!!!!!
- trghpy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0just because of the slashdot references...
But does it run Linux?
lets see what a beowulf cluster of these could do!
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