anyone do any clustering with G5's?

deRanged · 22-01-2004 2:20pm #1

or even with G4s?

We're evaluating G5's for a small compute cluster at the minute - I'd be interested in any comments ye have.
I have one desktop G5 for benchmarking, and we're looking at x-serves for the cluster.

We're coming from a Linux X86 background so anything about porting linux/x86 code, compiler optimisations, how to get the most out of gcc, would be very helpful.

cheers,
Brian

Capt'n Midnight · 04-02-2004 11:27pm

I take it you know about the third fastest supercomputer built from G5's - I'd heard they had offered their code - not sure if open source or chargeable

http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20031105S0011

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,60559,00.html

Faculty and students at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's Terascale Computing Facility connected 1,100 2-GHz dual-processor Power Mac G5

The team had built several Linux clusters before they started work on the Mac cluster. Dr. Srinidhi Varadarajan, director of the Virginia Tech Terascale Computing Facility,

Varadarajan said all the code he wrote for Virginia Tech's Linux-based clusters was moved over to the Mac OS X computers with relative ease.

http://www.top500.org/lists/2003/11/3/
http://computing.vt.edu/research_computing/terascale/
forum - but looks for login.

deRanged · 06-02-2004 11:49am

yeah I know about that - there's a lot of talk about using G5s now for cluster/grid computing. Not just because of Virginia Tech, the architecture of the G5 is well suited to work of this nature.

Binary compatibility is going to be an issue though.

Capt'n Midnight · 06-02-2004 11:31pm

http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix/ This is PC based - Debian
might be of some use.

deRanged · 09-02-2004 11:56am

cheers, I must try that out - I already have a beowulf cluster (http://bclayton.ucc.ie/grid/pics/stage2/100nodes.jpg - large image). I must try it out on a few of the nodes.

flywheel · 10-02-2004 11:47am

if you're based in Cork why not get in touch with Apple there, might be able to at least get some relevant contacts out of it...

BrianG

deRanged · 10-02-2004 1:28pm

I have done, have good contacts and we're in talks.

It's nice to get feedback from non-vendors too though, so's you know the pitfalls.

flywheel · 10-02-2004 1:59pm

I have done, have good contacts and we're in talks... It's nice to get feedback from non-vendors too though

grand

- was ment for you to get some relevant contacts with the likes of Virginia Polytech - by getting in touch with Apple to open some introductions etc. - not sure Apple Cork put any clusters together themselves in the plant - at least i haen't seen it as a drop-down option on the Apple Store yet

BrianG

deRanged · 10-02-2004 3:32pm

oh, well we have a contact with Virginia Tech too!

You'd be amazed what companies in Ireland have put together - there's a fair few clusters in Ireland - only one machine in the top500 though. It's owned by Vodafone apparently.

flywheel · 10-02-2004 4:07pm

Originally posted by deRanged
You'd be amazed what companies in Ireland have put together - there's a fair few clusters in Ireland - only one machine in the top500 though. It's owned by Vodafone apparently.

i'm sure there are a fair few knocking around for various applications (even datawarehoused on one in a past life) - post back if you get a G5 or Xserve running - at least you get the added benefit that it would look pretty too

BrianG

anyone do any clustering with G5's?

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