Clustering 266 laptops

[MrValentine]

I have 25-30 dell CPiA PII 266Mhz laptops, and i'm considering clustering them together. Is this really a worthwhile undertaking? What do you think their combined power would be equal to?

My linux skills are lacking, so to be honest this would be a rather educational project for me. (and that may be the reason I end up doing it if I do).

BTW this forum was great help in setting up F@H in my office building. (up to 4000 points in two days!! and still have 20 or so machines to get on)

 

[Arkaine23]

Folding will get no benefit from clustering. Each machine would run its own client. Also laptops are not the best folders anyway because they'd run hot and burn out their parts faster and since sometimes replacing something that's broekn is not cheap.

As for clustering, by all means play around with it. I recommend ClusterKnoppix which is a Linux Live CD which using openmosix for a load-balancing type of cluster. (ie jobs get distributed to the most capable free node in the cluster). A beowulf cluster is another type which is proabbly more what you're thinking about, but it requires specially coded software for it to operate in a way that all nodes in the cluster are sharing the work for a single job.

 

[Bodega]

sun released some good software for that a while ago. I was gonna make one myself with a bunch of old dell g and gx series dekstops but never got around to it...

 

[BillR]

Sure sounds like a fun project for sure. Timeless work units might work for you with those slow clock speeds.

The big down side is they each will draw about 75 or so watts each, which could become expensive fast.

Luck

 

[racercarl]

Let us know how it works, You never know we may be able to figure out how to do the folding programs with clusters.

just think of my 14 Ghz kicking out those high point work units at an unbelivable amount a day,