Clusters (was CLUG meeting 23 May 2002)

[Simon Haddon]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

On 23/05/02, 2:30:35, "Richard Cottrill" <richard_c at tpg.com.au> wrote 
regarding RE: Clusters (was CLUG meeting 23 May 2002):


> > I don't know specifically what you
> > refer to with
> > the comparison to a beowulf, I wouldn't be at all surprised if there is a
> > grid-ified version.  Do you have any links?

> I did a quick google for a brief beowulf intro to reassure myself that 
I'm
> not talking complete crap and I found http://www.beowulf.org/intro.html

> I think it's a cluster of dedicated machines; most likely using commodity
> hardware. I think it also implies Linux as the OS. The article above is
> careful to point out that each PID on the cluster is unique - allowing
> easy/efficient IPC between nodes.

> >From your description of a grid it sounds much like mosix. From skimming 
the
> Globus intro it looks like one significant difference is that mosix 
doesn't
> (yet) support adding nodes on-the-fly (so far as I can tell) and it 
doesn't

You can add and remove machines on the fly as long as the range of 
applicable ip addresses is pre-defined when mosix is started.  As I only 
have 3 machines defined I can only use those 3 addresses. If I had more 
defined then I could plug more in as I wanted.  There is an FAQ on it 
somewhere.

> support heterogeneous architectures (yet). It does look like 'grid' is 
just
> a way of describing a complete cluster computing environment of a certain
> variety. If I were a cynic I'd say it smells like a bit of marketing 
jargon
> (aka buzzword) for cluster.

> I suppose we'll have to wait awhile for the sleepy people to wake up and
> fire back their comments :)

> Richard