[SunRescue] RE: mainframes in our midst...

[Joshua D. Boyd]

On Fri, 6 Apr 2001, Bill Bradford wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 06, 2001 at 07:58:00PM +0000, William Staniewicz wrote:
> > Someone mentioned the cluster vs mainframe concept I believe.
> > If one were to set up a cluster optimally, which hardware and
> > software would be the "way-to-go"?
> 
> I'd say that a beowulf-type cluster might outperform small
> mainframe systems in raw parallel CPU power, but its not even
> going to TOUCH the I/O capacity.
> 
> (of course, Cray's new "layer UNICOS on top of a beowulf cluster
>  so that you have a single system image and dont have to parallelize
>  your software" concept looks REALLY nice..)


Mosix has a similar idea.  It is a set of kernel patches to linux I think.
I haven't tried it.  Someday if I can round up a bunch of spare intel
machines I might try it though.  The freshmeat blurb says this:

MOSIX is a software package to enhance the Linux kernel with cluster
computing capabilities. It allows an arbitrarily-sized cluster of PCs to
work cooperatively as if part of a single system. With MOSIX there is no
need to modify your applications, to link applications with any library,
or even to assign processes to different nodes. MOSIX does its job
automatically and transparently. The MOSIX algorithms are geared for
maximal performance, overhead-free scalability, and ease of use. 

Now that cray does a similar thing with unicos on intel,  we truly can say
linux machines are just like a cray but cheaper :).

--
Joshua Boyd