make a Supercomputer.

Duranix

hey


if you have linux, todays your lucky day

www.beowulf.org can teach you how to make your own Beowulf Cluster, so you can make your own supercomputer for VERY cheap.

yes, you say it costs millions, well, it doesnt. Beowulf Clusters are very cheap, and are just a set of nodes working together on a high speed network.

its cost efficient, and its free compared to a normal supercomputer, and its Efficient over all.

a direct link to the instructions are here:

http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Beowulf...ook/index.html



have fun. i know i will

im gonna make myself 10ghz

Duranix

just figured out that it should work on windows.

someone with the cash should make a cheap 8 or 16 node cluster.... hook them up with a 1000mbit ethernet or firewire connection, and then you have a UBER fast setup.

Tril

It is not suited to realtime processing as far as I know. The network latency between computers is usually too high.

Tipstaff

That's where my friends at Massively Parallel come in. These guys were the one to win the first DARPA grant among other awards, and government contracts. Definatly read up on these guys as their technollogy is being noticed by well named companies and government bodies. Unlike most parallel computing.. theirs is software based, and it's called HOWARD™:

"MPT has developed a revolutionary new approach to parallel processing. The company’s technology is a software based solution that can be deployed on conventional hardware, but can also take advantage of systems with high performance proprietary hardware components. MPT’s breakthrough has an innovative mathematical basis incorporating mathematical cascades, manifolds, and hyper-manifolds that guarantees maximum performance out of a parallel processing system. The heart of the solution is a new method of “all to all” cross communication that demonstrates improvements of multiple orders of magnitude for large systems when compared to conventional methods. The solution also includes new parallel programming models, new input-output data flow models, including run-time node allocation methodologies and multiple controller node data streaming, and a new check-pointing mode that guarantees system recovery for an arbitrary number of node failures. MPT’s technology has been benchmarked on a number of real-world problems, showing scientifically significant gains over conventional methodologies."

This software technology is so good at what it does that both Microsoft and Intel will be incorporating parts of it into their future products (Intel will be hard coding some of it right into their processors). You should see this thing running too. It would take too long to describe how it works, but I tell you.. I can't wait for this to hit mainstream. If I ever get the chance I'll post more about it.

The Cell chip better watch it's butt.. HOWARD™s coming.

-Tip

Edit: BTW: The Darpa test was "to look for tanks in a scene with varied backgrounds, different tank orientations and different degrees of obscuration and masking. The below images show the target pixel representation and two sample images of the same scene captured in different wavelengths." MPT used 127 PCs (can't remember the speeds, but it was under P90s) all linked in parallel (uses standard ethernet btw), and it took only 6 seconds for them to complete the test... 6 secs! The Cray X1 was STILL chugging away on it LOOONG after MPTs test was done. Now that is what true parallel computing is about!

DarkFoss

I'd be a folding legend like 1920x1080i-How???

Seriously though sounds fantastic when it becomes fully utilized. The scientific implications are staggering.

Tipstaff

One of my customers is a heavy investor in the company. That's how I found out about them.

Right now MP is working with customs agencies to utilize HOWARD for their scanning systems. The idea is that you would utilitize the existing computer systems processors/ram to help distinguish specific items from Xrays/Infared scans from within luggage, packages, or cargo that come through (including usage in airports and board crossings). Not only does this severely reduce the cost to upgrade security, but scanning can now take mere seconds/minutes instead of hours.

One thing I should mention: if you read up on THIS page from their site you should check out the first segment under 'Commercial Applications':

" HOWARD™ is already revolutionizing the oil and gas industry. MPT currently operates a 255-processor cluster that processes seismic data so rapidly that it can produce nearly five million dollars worth of finished seismic data per year at an annual operating cost of just $250,000. MPT is collaborating with two international companies to parallelize additional software applications for the oil and gas industry and build two very large HOWARD™ processing centers that will run those applications. HOWARD™ has such blinding speed in processing oil and gas problems that it can reduce a conventional complex one-month processing job to a simple two-day task."

What kind of processor cluster exactly? Well, last time I saw it MP was using 255 low-end, Pentium 90 based (if I remember correctly) laptops to processor that data! God damn LAPTOPS!!! You shoulda seen it. Rows upon rows of laptops all linked together using simple 10/100 ethernet cable, all processing data. The neat thing about HOWARD is that it can, in simple terms, 'devy' up what gets processed. Not only assign data to different machines, but what specific PARTS of the machine are to be utilized. That means I could use not only the CPU/Ram from other sources for processing, but I can also use the video card ONLY if I wanted. Think about it. I could use the video cards from 10 (or more) different machines for gaming. How f'ing cool is that!! (for all you gits out there who swear up and down by 3DMark.. just imagine 3DMarks in the 100k-Million range )

Suffice it to say I really want this. Last I heard MP was, or is incorporating HOWARD into hardware (PCI card I think) in order to protect their intellectual property (plus, as I said, Microsoft and Intel are in negotiations to incorpoarte parts of HOWARD into their products), so the main problem is getting the hardware to be affordable to the average consumer (last estimate I saw was that it was costing them $300 to produce a card). They could sell the software, but in this day and age pirating is rampant. HOWARD would be pirated really, really damn fast, and this is unacceptable to MP... and I don't blame them.

Damnit, I gotta stop talking about this. Everytime I do I get all excited about it.. gonna be so sweet. I just wish I could convince my customer to 'loan' or sell me a 'discounted' disc/card. I want this so badly.

-Tip

pr0digal jenius

I wonder what a 32 machine cluster of computers like mine could do

DarkFoss

The charts on this page show what a 31 machine cluster can do along with other configurations. The speed is quite insane.