[ale] Beowulf on a stick

[Jason Boyles]

On Wed, May 13, 1998 at 04:55:05PM -0400, Christopher Fowler wrote:
> So for 29.95 I get Linux that is capable of doing Multi-Computers under one
> "brain".  Do I have to write programs to use this technology or will the
> Kernel do all the work?

This I do not know. The main Beowulf software page
(http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/beowulf/software.html) indicates that
several popular parallelization APIs are supported, in addition to pthreads.
I do know that machines in a Beowulf cluster have a shared PID and VM space,
but I'm not clear on whether simple threads will magically migrate
from one CPU to another.

CERN has replaced some of their IBM SP/2s with Beowulf clusters, and
Fermilab is jumping in, too. Now not only movies and mail, but important
physics is being done on Linux. I have heard anecdotal reports that Beowulf
is less stable than an SP/2, but that could be the result of many other
factors besides inherent instability of the Beowulf code.

peas,
----
Jason Boyles <jason at chunk.hboc.com>
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."