7 ms·

Can You Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of These?

by dagurp 4y ago

snapcaster 4y ago
This comment always makes me laugh and then remember how old I am and get a little sad
- xtracto 4y ago
  it's one of the earliest /. Era memes that I remember, along with "year of linux desktop" , "netcraft confirms" and "in Russia X does YOU". But I think all those are contemporary, along with "email is for old people " and others I don't remember now. Darn those were nice times.
  - rerx 4y ago
    Is a Beowulf cluster something conceptually different from any compute cluster / super computer running Linux today?
    - trelane 4y ago
      I think the main distinction is that modern clusters are shiny, sleek, fancy, and expensive. Whereas a Beowulf cluster is grungy, full of bailing twine, chewing gum, and possessing high levels of Bodge. And dirt cheap, built with what you can get, often used.
    - icco 4y ago
      Beowulfs were huge hacks back in the day, but are similar to most super computers. The main difference from how many think of compute clusters these days is it is managed as a single machine, so historically needed identical hardware. Parallel processing and concurrency used to be more rare :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_cluster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_cluster
    - dekhn 4y ago
      The defining attribute of original Beowulf clusters that made them interesting was the use of channel bonding to get more bandwidth than a single NIC could provide cheaply in those days. At the same time, it demonstrated you could build a useful and inexpensive cluster using white-box linux desktop machines sitting on wire shelving. I did exactly the same thing at the time, except for the channel bonding, which would have helped my cluster scaling significantly, but I didn't have any budget left over for more NICs and since I was using a hub, there would have been lots of collisions anyway.
    - retrac 4y ago
      It's a cluster, made out of commodity computers and network equipment, that wasn't designed specifically to be part of a cluster. "Beowulf" was just the name of an early machine built that way at NASA in the 90s. The approach is not unusual now; many "low-end" supercomputers are just a few racks of commodity servers. But it was very unconventional in the early 90s, which is why the Beowulf term existed, to distinguish it from "real" clusters. Hardware Ethernet switches -- able to stream from port to port at full speed -- were the revolutionary component. Before Ethernet, clusters required specialized hardware implementing a crossbar-like switched fabric, so that all the nodes could communicate at high speed with each other, with a minimum of hops. These were solutions for clustering mainframes and minicomputers, horribly expensive and proprietary.
  - snapcaster 4y ago
    "year of linux desktop" takes me back haha. It was such a simpler time
    - dekhn 4y ago
      It's be great to go back in time to 2001 and tell Slashdot: I am from the future. Linux runs on a billion devices more powerful than any desktop computer it currently runs on. A quarter of people in the world use Linux daily. However, Linux still never had it year of the desktop.
      - hyperman1 4y ago
        You can add to that list that microsoft has 2 different wsl's and distributes Linux in it's app store.
        xtracto 4y ago
        Imagine telling Steve Ballmer about that hahaha. So much energy spent crushing Linux ... to get to that
  - halo 4y ago
    Stop making me feel old you insensitive clod.
  - deltarholamda 4y ago
    I was terribly disappointed there wasn't a news article on slashdot when Alan Thicke passed away. Reading at -1 was a bit of a chore, but also sometimes fun.
ryzvonusef 4y ago
(Score:5, Funny) my last /. comment was 2014, jfc

Can You Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of These?

by dagurp 4y ago

Can You Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of These?

snapcaster 4y ago

This comment always makes me laugh and then remember how old I am and get a little sad

xtracto 4y ago
it's one of the earliest /. Era memes that I remember, along with "year of linux desktop" , "netcraft confirms" and "in Russia X does YOU". But I think all those are contemporary, along with "email is for old people " and others I don't remember now. Darn those were nice times.
- rerx 4y ago
  Is a Beowulf cluster something conceptually different from any compute cluster / super computer running Linux today?
  - trelane 4y ago
    I think the main distinction is that modern clusters are shiny, sleek, fancy, and expensive. Whereas a Beowulf cluster is grungy, full of bailing twine, chewing gum, and possessing high levels of Bodge. And dirt cheap, built with what you can get, often used.
  - icco 4y ago
    Beowulfs were huge hacks back in the day, but are similar to most super computers. The main difference from how many think of compute clusters these days is it is managed as a single machine, so historically needed identical hardware. Parallel processing and concurrency used to be more rare :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_cluster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_cluster
  - dekhn 4y ago
    The defining attribute of original Beowulf clusters that made them interesting was the use of channel bonding to get more bandwidth than a single NIC could provide cheaply in those days. At the same time, it demonstrated you could build a useful and inexpensive cluster using white-box linux desktop machines sitting on wire shelving. I did exactly the same thing at the time, except for the channel bonding, which would have helped my cluster scaling significantly, but I didn't have any budget left over for more NICs and since I was using a hub, there would have been lots of collisions anyway.
  - retrac 4y ago
    It's a cluster, made out of commodity computers and network equipment, that wasn't designed specifically to be part of a cluster. "Beowulf" was just the name of an early machine built that way at NASA in the 90s. The approach is not unusual now; many "low-end" supercomputers are just a few racks of commodity servers. But it was very unconventional in the early 90s, which is why the Beowulf term existed, to distinguish it from "real" clusters. Hardware Ethernet switches -- able to stream from port to port at full speed -- were the revolutionary component. Before Ethernet, clusters required specialized hardware implementing a crossbar-like switched fabric, so that all the nodes could communicate at high speed with each other, with a minimum of hops. These were solutions for clustering mainframes and minicomputers, horribly expensive and proprietary.
- snapcaster 4y ago
  "year of linux desktop" takes me back haha. It was such a simpler time
  - dekhn 4y ago
    It's be great to go back in time to 2001 and tell Slashdot: I am from the future. Linux runs on a billion devices more powerful than any desktop computer it currently runs on. A quarter of people in the world use Linux daily. However, Linux still never had it year of the desktop.
    - hyperman1 4y ago
      You can add to that list that microsoft has 2 different wsl's and distributes Linux in it's app store.
      - xtracto 4y ago
        Imagine telling Steve Ballmer about that hahaha. So much energy spent crushing Linux ... to get to that
- halo 4y ago
  Stop making me feel old you insensitive clod.
- deltarholamda 4y ago
  I was terribly disappointed there wasn't a news article on slashdot when Alan Thicke passed away. Reading at -1 was a bit of a chore, but also sometimes fun.

ryzvonusef 4y ago

(Score:5, Funny) my last /. comment was 2014, jfc