Xgrid - Parallel and Distributed Computing

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by yamabushi
What is the fastest way to connect a cluster of 3 to 6 PowerMacs?

Use Shake or After Effects. Time required: zero.

Seriously, it depends entirely on what you want to do. If you want to run embarrassingly parallel jobs like network renders, Shake and After Effects have the functionality already, built in. How you do it for other applications depends on the job.

 

[yamabushi]

I was thinking of building my small cluster for financial apps. I would be writing some scripts and using XML to get them to talk to each other. The problem is that I probably won't be able to recompile them for this specific use. I was hoping for a solution that would not be application specific for this reason. It would be ideal if I could somehow get MP aware code to access all of the nodes without modifying the code. My first cluster is meant as a testbed and thus can be very small. Thus 3-6 nodes, 2 processors each.

It appears that GigE with a switch may be the best way to go because it will scale up well. However, I would like to experiment with 3 nodes connected directly to each other without a switch.

 

[Jeff Harrell]

Originally posted by yamabushi
I was thinking of building my small cluster for financial apps.

Why? What financial application is compute-bound?

 

[ObviousTroll]

Originally posted by Jeff Harrell
Why? What financial application is compute-bound?

The canonical example is calculating retirement benefits on demand. That was actually a big case study for one of the grid software companies.

BTW - I'm currently researching grids for my company; but they are M$ biased to the extreme.