From: "John E. Kuslich" Newsgroups: comp.parallel Subject: Re: Business use of Beowulf Date: 21 Jul 1999 14:26:13 GMT Organization: CRAK Software www.crak.com Approved: bigrigg@cs.cmu.edu Message-Id: <7n4la5$rr8$1@goldenapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu> Originator: bigrigg@ux6.sp.cs.cmu.edu Xref: ukc comp.parallel:15736 You ca build a small Beowulf system for such a low cost that you would be delinquent in your duties if you do not at LEAST inversigate Linux and Beowulf!! Check out http://www.crak.com for data on such a system. Also, I believe the latest Kinux kernel has built in Multiprocessor support. Check it out. JK Peter Szwedyk wrote: > Issue: Is it possible to use a beowulf without re-writing > existing business applications? > I just want to summarize what I found and what conclusion > I formed. I would appreciate your comments or corrections: > > There are two common parallel computation models: > - Message Passing > - Distributed Shared Memory > > Beowulf on Linux employs the Message Passing model which means that > existing serial applications, whether multi-threaded or not, will not > benefit from a Beowulf system without re-writing. > > It is my understanding that in a Distributed Shared Memory system > existing serial, multi-threaded apps would automatically (in most > cases) be able to take advantage of the cluster without a need for > re-write. However, DSM is currently not supported in a Beowulf system. > > The conclusion I reached was that a business organization that is > - willing to invest in building a Beowulf/Linux cluster > - NOT willing to re-write existing serial apps (to Message Passing > model) > > currently can NOT benefit from a Beowulf system. > > So what do these business organizations do? Well, we could: > - wait for DSM addition to the Beowulf system > - search for another DSM cluster solution. The MOSIX team is currently > working on a Network RAM project. Could this be it? Are there other > such projects? -- CRAK Software (Password Recovery Software) Http://www.crak.com johnk@crak.com 602 863 9274 or 1 800 505 2725 In the USA -- Articles to bigrigg+parallel@cs.cmu.edu (Admin: bigrigg@cs.cmu.edu) Archive: http://www.hensa.ac.uk/parallel/internet/usenet/comp.parallel