What's a beowulf cluster?

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Hamel
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What's a beowulf cluster?

Post by Hamel »

Thread inspired by The PS2 cluster story on Slashdot

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"Right now we can tell you a report was filed by the family of a 12 year old boy yesterday afternoon alleging Mr. Michael Jackson of criminal activity. A search warrant has been filed and that search is currently taking place. Mr. Jackson has not been charged with any crime. We cannot specifically address the content of the police report as it is confidential information at the present time, however, we can confirm that Mr. Jackson forced the boy to listen to the Howard Stern show and watch the movie Private Parts over and over again."
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Post by Hamel »

*informative BUMP*
Space Cowboy wrote:The PS2 has 2 vector units (VU's), each does a 4-way (xyzw) floating point vector dot product with another vector in a single clock cycle, with 4 cycle internal latency. The chips are pipelined, so you can just keep feeding any 4-cycle instructions into it (90-odd% are 4-cycle, matrix deconvolution will take it more :-) and you get the answers 4 clocks later...

That's 8x2 (16 :-) float multiply ops per clock, at 300 MHz if you keep the pipeline going. The performance of a 700MHz Celeron doesn't even come close, it's roughly 1/8th the speed...
"Right now we can tell you a report was filed by the family of a 12 year old boy yesterday afternoon alleging Mr. Michael Jackson of criminal activity. A search warrant has been filed and that search is currently taking place. Mr. Jackson has not been charged with any crime. We cannot specifically address the content of the police report as it is confidential information at the present time, however, we can confirm that Mr. Jackson forced the boy to listen to the Howard Stern show and watch the movie Private Parts over and over again."
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Post by Beowulf »

A cluster of me. :D


Seriously, it's a cluster of identical machines running special software that allows the user to act as if it's one machine, kinda sorta.
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Post by Hamel »

Beowulf wrote:A cluster of me. :D


Seriously, it's a cluster of identical machines running special software that allows the user to act as if it's one machine, kinda sorta.
Essentially how modern supercomputers are designed, then?
"Right now we can tell you a report was filed by the family of a 12 year old boy yesterday afternoon alleging Mr. Michael Jackson of criminal activity. A search warrant has been filed and that search is currently taking place. Mr. Jackson has not been charged with any crime. We cannot specifically address the content of the police report as it is confidential information at the present time, however, we can confirm that Mr. Jackson forced the boy to listen to the Howard Stern show and watch the movie Private Parts over and over again."
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Post by Crayz9000 »

Along the same principles, yes.

The whole Beowulf thing is a running joke on Slashdot. Any time some new computer device comes up, someone is bound to ask "But can you make a beowulf cluster out of it?"
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Post by phongn »

Hamel wrote:Essentially how modern supercomputers are designed, then?
In a very rough sense, yes.
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Post by phongn »

Hamel wrote:*informative BUMP*
Space Cowboy wrote:The PS2 has 2 vector units (VU's), each does a 4-way (xyzw) floating point vector dot product with another vector in a single clock cycle, with 4 cycle internal latency. The chips are pipelined, so you can just keep feeding any 4-cycle instructions into it (90-odd% are 4-cycle, matrix deconvolution will take it more :-) and you get the answers 4 clocks later...

That's 8x2 (16 :-) float multiply ops per clock, at 300 MHz if you keep the pipeline going. The performance of a 700MHz Celeron doesn't even come close, it's roughly 1/8th the speed...
I'm not sure how accurate SC's post is (and remember, this is Slashdot, home of FUD). The two architectures are wildly different, and he's doing an apples-to-oranges comparison with his vector/float comparison.
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Post by Einhander Sn0m4n »

Crayz9000 wrote:Along the same principles, yes.

The whole Beowulf thing is a running joke on Slashdot. Any time some new computer device comes up, someone is bound to ask "But can you make a beowulf cluster out of it?"
Actually the phrase is "Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these!"
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Post by Yogi »

Also mensioned in megatokyo.
http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=403
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Post by Hamel »

Yogi wrote:Also mensioned in megatokyo.
http://www.megatokyo.com/index.php?strip_id=403
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GAINAX NEEDS TO MAKE AN ANIME OUT OF IT, STAT!
"Right now we can tell you a report was filed by the family of a 12 year old boy yesterday afternoon alleging Mr. Michael Jackson of criminal activity. A search warrant has been filed and that search is currently taking place. Mr. Jackson has not been charged with any crime. We cannot specifically address the content of the police report as it is confidential information at the present time, however, we can confirm that Mr. Jackson forced the boy to listen to the Howard Stern show and watch the movie Private Parts over and over again."
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Post by Alan Bolte »

In that case, how would you define a Beowulf Clusterfuck?
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Post by Hamel »

Alan Bolte wrote:In that case, how would you define a Beowulf Clusterfuck?
A cluster of PS2s running DOA3? :lol:
"Right now we can tell you a report was filed by the family of a 12 year old boy yesterday afternoon alleging Mr. Michael Jackson of criminal activity. A search warrant has been filed and that search is currently taking place. Mr. Jackson has not been charged with any crime. We cannot specifically address the content of the police report as it is confidential information at the present time, however, we can confirm that Mr. Jackson forced the boy to listen to the Howard Stern show and watch the movie Private Parts over and over again."
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Post by Yogi »

Would be interesting as an Anime, but how would 133t $p3@|< be handled?
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Post by Beowulf »

Alan Bolte wrote:In that case, how would you define a Beowulf Clusterfuck?

Me screwing a bunch of girls at once. :D :twisted:

*hides from GF*
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