[H-GEN] HUMBUG cluster WAS Re: [HUM-TALKS] Talk / Demonstration of MOSIX

[Andrew Pullin]

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Hi All,
    I would be interested in "playing" with a Beowulf Cluster at meetings.
As a suggestion - would it have to be very big? We could maybe just use 3-4
machines from old hardware we have available instead of lots and have a
power problem. The idea is to get a cluster to get the basics and the
concepts right, the scaling and performance can come later.

    Another suggestion I have is we could advertise the meeting by doing a
publicity stunt and build a cluster. I remember a few years ago when Beowulf
was young about a Conference where someone did a demonstration by literally
buying the book at lunchtime, making a phonecall to a hardware supplier,
borrowing some hardware, and when it was delivered the next day, built the
315th fastest super computer in the world by mid afternoon and the cost was
less than US$20000.

    We could do the same thing. How about do an installfest and ask a local
supplier to loan us the hardware for a couple of days. We could promote the
event with press releases (which don't cost us anything) and sell it to the
hardware supplier like that. If the media doesn't pick it up it doesn't
matter as the supplier would probably hope to get some free advertising from
at least the attendees at the installfest. Besides that, if we posted on
slashdot and got the supplier to list the Web page on their server, a good
slashdotting should be enough exposure for any company. We could demo the
cluster to compute Pi to a million or so places maybe.

    We could also ask for donations, or have a BBQ to raise money for Humbug
to buy the machines for the meetings. If we could use 4 machines for a
"clusterette" say to play with - cheap low spec machines would only cost us
about $2500 tops (no monitors, keyboards etc). Maybe a rich entrepreneur
could donate them to Humbug (how about it Hitcho? Tax write-off for your
company - gift to a non profit organization). Anyhow there are a few ideas
that we could maybe look at to get the project going.

    Finally, I have a friend who does Beowulf Clusters for a living and
works at Griffith Uni. I will be seeing him tonight, and if I remember, I
will ask him if maybe he might like to do a talk at a meeting about what is
involved in setting a cluster up. Who knows, he might be willing to donate
or support us somehow. Basically - you can't find out if you don't ask.
Anyhow - is anyone else interested in this project? Hope I have helped with
my 2c worth.
    Cheers!
        Andrew.


----- Original Message -----
From: "David Seikel" <won_fang at yahoo.com.au>
To: "HGENERAL" <general at lists.humbug.org.au>
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2003 2:57 PM
Subject: [H-GEN] HUMBUG cluster WAS Re: [HUM-TALKS] Talk / Demonstration of
MOSIX


> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
>
>  --- Ben Fowler <fowlerb at optushome.com.au> wrote:
> > In fact, a couple of people in the club were considering chucking
> > together a HUMBUG Beowulf cluster as a special club project, but it
> > never got off the ground since we couldn't find an economical way to
> > house and power up the pile of motherboards we had access to.  It's a
> > shame, because a toy Beowulf cluster would be a fun and interesting toy
> > to play with, even for the experience of writing and testing some toy
> > parallel applications.
>
> Any body interested in trying it again?  Personally I have programmed
every
> class of computing device except supercomputers, and I have this hole to
> fill in my resume B-).
>
> Instead of powering a bunch of motherboards, we could just use the
> computers we normally bring to meetings.
>
>
> http://movies.yahoo.com.au - Yahoo! Movies
> - What's on at your local cinema?
>
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