I read about a major company, I think it was HP, that has created a Beowulf
cluster (a group of cheap PCs linked together to create a supercomputer)
that qualifies as one of the more powerful supercomputers in existence. One
advantage of this method, they said, is that when you add and remove
computers from the cluster, the total processing power changes linearly, so
it's easy to calculate how many computers you'll need for a specific task.
Also, it makes it easier to split the processing time between two projects
if the need arises. I think they used something more powerful than 486's
and Pentiums, but I can't remember exactly what they used, as I read about
it a few months ago. I know that they used only cheap off-the-shelf PCs
though. If I remember correctly, they run it on Linux, or some variation of
it, with a master computer (or computers) that controls all the others,
similar to Stanford's Folding@home project, but probably more optimized for
LAN usage and proprietary things.
So I suppose if you do it correctly, you can get great results, although I
imagine that it would take quite a bit of work to set everything up.
Daniel Imfeld
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Saad,
Old PC's can be
combined to make a super computer.
I've heard about that but I wonder whether it is a practical idea. The
controlling software that would assign parts of the computing task to
various
computers would have to be vary sophisticated. Then
there would be the distances between computers. It would probably be better
to just use the
system cards otherwise all those old power supplies would consume lots of
energy and there'd be
the problem of varying power supply connectors and voltage requirements,
maybe some kind
of bus communication would be necessary to avoid port bottlenecks. It would
certainly be a
good project for some IT students but I think the work involved in making it
happen in a
real world situation would more than cancel most benefits.
But then I could be wrong, wouldn't be the first or last time.
Jim
