clusterfudge.wordpress.com— Use the cheap computers you have lying around, or pick up some cheap economy PCs and turn it into a thread-ravaging monster.
Jan 9, 2007View in Crawl 4
@cdlavalleContrary to popular belief, many (most?) games lend themselves very well to parallel processing, just not the way most of them are currently written. It's also not that much harder to create such an application, it's all really a matter of perspective and experience. A very basic (though not ideal) method would be to offload all of the A.I. to one CPU while the other CPU does the rest of the work. For instance, A well known developer for the SEGA Saturn (and arcade) lamented at the difficulty at porting his games to single CPU platforms (ie Dreamcast). Trying to force all the processing onto one CPU was hurting the headroom he had with a dual CPU design. I began to realize then that the reason why multi-CPU platforms haven't really caught on (at the time) wasn't because of cost or performance issues, it was because so many developers wrote software for single CPU architecture, that they couldn't think in terms of mult-CPU architectures. Look at some of the multi-CPU consoles like the PC Engine, Saturn and Jaguar and compare their games to their competition at the time. Even to this day, AvP for the Jaguar is still regarded as one of the best examples of the series ever.If all a person ever developed games for was one CPU and one GPU, then yes, multiple CPUs or even multiple GPUs are going to look very difficult to write code for. But once you start diving into it, then you begin to realize that you have a lot more wiggle room in terms of performance, you just have to have more care with how you manage your processes and divide the work.
To use this thing as a parallel computer [and not just a pile of PCs mostly generating heat] you have to use "distributed programming" [check google for "message passing interface"]. Which leads to how if it's to get any performance, "some kind of switch" just won't cut it. The interconnecting network is roughly half of the initial cost of a supercomputer these days. You won't fold proteins with a pile of junk before the sun goes supernova. Sorry about that.
Exactly what I was thinking. A cluster of PCs burns a lot of power and that get expensive. PCs convert AC power to DC inefficiently. Where I work, everything runs on 48 volts dc so we don't need individual power supplies in each machine.
I don't need a big cluster for Folding@Home (the only project I would actually use on a beowulf cluster). All I need is my old 466mhz Celeron box to run day and night, dedicated to only Folding@Home and the occasional backups as a NAS.
ucfmarkJan 10, 2007
hiney- I think you are forgetting:Step 5. ...Step 6. Profit!
raindogmxJan 10, 2007
But Will It Blend?
liquidpenguinJan 10, 2007
@cdlavalleContrary to popular belief, many (most?) games lend themselves very well to parallel processing, just not the way most of them are currently written. It's also not that much harder to create such an application, it's all really a matter of perspective and experience. A very basic (though not ideal) method would be to offload all of the A.I. to one CPU while the other CPU does the rest of the work. For instance, A well known developer for the SEGA Saturn (and arcade) lamented at the difficulty at porting his games to single CPU platforms (ie Dreamcast). Trying to force all the processing onto one CPU was hurting the headroom he had with a dual CPU design. I began to realize then that the reason why multi-CPU platforms haven't really caught on (at the time) wasn't because of cost or performance issues, it was because so many developers wrote software for single CPU architecture, that they couldn't think in terms of mult-CPU architectures. Look at some of the multi-CPU consoles like the PC Engine, Saturn and Jaguar and compare their games to their competition at the time. Even to this day, AvP for the Jaguar is still regarded as one of the best examples of the series ever.If all a person ever developed games for was one CPU and one GPU, then yes, multiple CPUs or even multiple GPUs are going to look very difficult to write code for. But once you start diving into it, then you begin to realize that you have a lot more wiggle room in terms of performance, you just have to have more care with how you manage your processes and divide the work.
vietvetJan 10, 2007
To use this thing as a parallel computer [and not just a pile of PCs mostly generating heat] you have to use "distributed programming" [check google for "message passing interface"]. Which leads to how if it's to get any performance, "some kind of switch" just won't cut it. The interconnecting network is roughly half of the initial cost of a supercomputer these days. You won't fold proteins with a pile of junk before the sun goes supernova. Sorry about that.
chess007Jan 10, 2007
Could this (or any other type of cluster) be used with dvd ripping software to speed it up?
genghis1Jan 11, 2007
Exactly what I was thinking. A cluster of PCs burns a lot of power and that get expensive. PCs convert AC power to DC inefficiently. Where I work, everything runs on 48 volts dc so we don't need individual power supplies in each machine.
compismyrxJan 11, 2007
I don't need a big cluster for Folding@Home (the only project I would actually use on a beowulf cluster). All I need is my old 466mhz Celeron box to run day and night, dedicated to only Folding@Home and the occasional backups as a NAS.
Closed AccountFeb 25, 2007
if you want to learn how to build a basic computer on DVD:<a class="user" href="http://www.learntobuildcomputers.com">http://www.learntobuildcomputers.com</a>