[plug] IBM playing with Beowulf clusters... (fwd)

[Matt Kemner]

For those of you not on the UCC list... Sorry if you got this 2x

 - Matt

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 23:38:09 +0800
From: David Luyer <luyer at ucs.uwa.edu.au>
To: ucc at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au
Subject: IBM playing with Beowulf clusters...


http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?99039.ecsuperlinux.htm

IBM set up a cluster of 17 Xeon-based NetFinity's running
Linux (Beowulf clustering), just to show they could I guess :-)
Matched the current benchmark record set by a Cray T3t-900-AC64
on a PovRay benchmark.

(they also did some rendering and turned on of the systems off
while doing it, supposedly to demonstrate the flexibility of
the X architecture)

Materials used: One copy of red hat linux from a local bookstore,
a 100Mbps hub, oh and $150,000 worth of IBM NetFinity's.  But then
they were matching a $5.5m Cray on the benchmark they were playing
with :-)

Anyway, if IBM can throw together a Beowulf cluster in one day
using a RedHat CD from the back of a book, we should be able
to make a (slightly less powerful) one without too much effort :-)

David.