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Homebuilt farm/supercomputer ....possible?

W

WillowHawk

Gawd
Joined
Jul 7, 2004
Messages
590
i want to know if its possible to have a kind of ....homebuilt "supercomputer" running a windows os...i'm kinda new to the whole thing, but not to computers themselfs. the idea i have is to build a bunch of cheap computers using old/used/cheap parts, and hook them up so that either every process is handled by all the CPUs as a group, or maybe the cpus can split up the work or something. its just an idea, might be fantasy to have them run a microsoft os, but meh, thought i should ask
 
Its possible. Its also expensive. And the actual varieity of clustering may not quite be what you imagine. A much better solution for a cluster would run Linux. In fact you could play around with some clustering types by using an OS that runs from a bootable CD, and do so without writing anything to your hard drives unless you want to.
 
BillR said:
What you propose is what we call a "farm", many computers doing folding. Have a look at these links:


http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/articles/howto/FAH_Diskless_Farm_1.html

http://home.comcast.net/~bturmelle/diskless.html

http://overclockix.octeams.com/

Luck
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although i think the idea of a farm is better than that of a cluster for a folding, i'm not sure that's what the original poster had in mind, Bill.

I thought he/she was asking about clustering, which would be, say, 10 computers working on one WU, as opposed to a farm, which would be 10 computers working on 10 different, independant WU's.
 
Yeah, probably. Just wanted to toss in that alternative. ;)
 
Carnival Forces said:
although i think the idea of a farm is better than that of a cluster for a folding, i'm not sure that's what the original poster had in mind, Bill.

I thought he/she was asking about clustering, which would be, say, 10 computers working on one WU, as opposed to a farm, which would be 10 computers working on 10 different, independant WU's.
Click to expand...

No, the original poster was talking about a cluster-fsck. I mean a Microsoft operating system? Jeez that would be hell. Running Windows on one processor is unstable enough.

The cluster described, sans MS, is fairly commonplace now. Remember, Google is your friend. For a home-made project it probably is more trouble than it is worth, sort of like running the Iditarod sled-dog race with a team of Chihuahuas. Technically feasible but one heck of a lot of work. This is just speculation on my part, assuming a hodge-podge of components and systems. If the systems were all identical however, then you have ease of setup and maintenance. But check it out for yourself - I'm sure it would be very satisfying to put a cluster together and bring it to life.

I'll stick the life of a simple farmer - it keeps me busy as it is. Now where is that spare 1 GB hdd?


 
Thanks folks for the info, it was just an idea i had to take up my time, and drain all the money i have. my bro does alot of maya stuff, and i thought that maybe i could help him out if i build a farm/cluster, but now that i'm seeing that its more work than its worth....*ditches idea in to a muddy ditch, far, far away* :rolleyes:
 
WillowHawk said:
Thanks folks for the info, it was just an idea i had to take up my time, and drain all the money i have. my bro does alot of maya stuff, and i thought that maybe i could help him out if i build a farm/cluster, but now that i'm seeing that its more work than its worth....*ditches idea in to a muddy ditch, far, far away* :rolleyes:
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nononono, by all means, build a farm (and make sure it folds), just think twice before trying a cluster...
 
I have no idea to add other than to say Beowulf. It's an os for clustering I believe that would do the job in place of m$. Linux would probably be a better choice if it does what you want, m$ would be the os of choice only if you're a masochist.
 
Beowulf is a Linux distro designed to cluster. It would definitely be an interesting exercise to cluster some machines, and with Beowulf would cost you nothing but the download. Check out http://www.beowulf.org for more.

Ediit: I actually followed my link and did some reading and Beowulf is more of a concept than an OS. Another useful link is http://www.linuxhpc.org

Luck!
 
Yeah Chugiak, I went there after I posted that too. I read a little and it looks like maybe Beowulf is mostly about the protocol used to get the machines to act as one big machine. I did a search at Barnes & Noble for Beowulf books and they actually have one listed that is for both Linux and Windows. Someone left a review of the book saying Beowulf doesn't work on Windows and it mainly covers clustering instead...... Anyway, it'd be interesting to read up on, whether it's something that's viable or not is another story. I know there's guys hanging out in other forums besides DC that use it or have attempted it, maybe someone that's tried it will fill in the blanks.
 
WillowHawk, Beowulf aside I expect what you really want is a render farm runnning Windows. Rather than a cluster, a network of computers running rendering clients can accomplish what you want. I don't know what out there is suitable for the Windows environment, but there is a DrQueue program for Linux/Irix/BSD that distributes rendering jobs across a network. It is released under the GPL, but presumably requires Maya for Linux.

I recommend you set up that farm, and while you are figuring out how to make a Maya render farm it can be cranking away on Folding@Home. When you have your render farm set up, it can be working to aid medical research in the background.

And you will probably find more beneficial help on render farms at CG Talk

Luck!
 
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