Website supports open source cluster-based supercomputing
Apr 17, 2000 — by LinuxDevices Staff — from the LinuxDevices Archive — 1 viewsStockholm, SWEDEN — PileofPCs.org was launched today, with the objective of hastening the proliferation of cluster-based supercomputing (i.e. Beowulf class computers) — by creating, promoting and sponsoring the Open Source development of distributions, applications, and tools comparable to those sold by traditional supercomputer vendors. All three of the group's initial projects are being hosted at Sourceforge.net.
“PileofPCs.Org hopes to hasten the day that clusters of cheap computers become more useful” said Dr. Terrence E. Brown, Founder/Executive Director. “Our intention is to apply all the technology, resources and volunteers we can to help the growth of cluster-based high performance computing as fast as it possibly can. Furthermore, PileofPCs.Org is embedded and wedded to the Open-Source Philosophy and community,”
“We are doing this in a number of ways” continued Brown. “First, we are creating a new Linux distribution (and tools) that will allow anyone to easily create a general purpose supercomputer — a Vanilla Beowulf — without being a linux programming expert. Second, given that a supercomputer is worthless unless it does something; therefore, perhaps more importantly, we are also, sponsoring the development of wide range of useful applications both parallel and parametric. Additionally, one of the biggest problem with deploying scalable production-class superclusters is the lack of mature and tested management tools comparable to what the traditional supercomputer vendors provide. PilesofPCs.Org aims to change this as well.”
Current Projects
- A new linux distribution that will allow those with limited technical knowledge create a vanilla Beowulf class supercomputer. SuperClustor Linux is hosted here.
- An Open source version of a base application that would deliver the high level of performance required for parametric executions, by distributing the jobs over a computer cluster and/or network. This application will allow users of cluster systems to use already existing programs with little of no rewriting. Commercial products that do similar tasks include Clustor and EnFuzion. This would be an open source alternative to them. OpenClustor is hosted here.
- An open source version of a base application that would enable users with no particular knowledge in Linux, to setup, configure and manage a Linux cluster. With ease of use so that simple click is enough to add or remove nodes, monitor processors loads and temperatures. Users will no longer be required to allocate specific resources to build and maintain their cluster supercomputer. A commercial product of this nature is Alinka's Raisin. SuperCluster Manager is hosted here.PileofPCs.Org is looking to support and encourage the development many other application and/or tool projects including two special types: those requiring parallelization and those supporting parametric execution. The group wants to spur the development applications for all types of situations including, but not limited to science, finance, multimedia, bioinformatics, statistics, weather, data mining, design, neural networks, modelling, etc.
- Parallelized applications — Although efficient parallelization is a property of the specific beowulf computer, we believe that we can promote the creation of pre-parallelized applications. While this will be a challenge, creating a repository for pre-parallelized and parallelized code with help speed the development of useable applications for all.
- Applications that support parametric execution — Parametric executions require that the same application is executed numerous times. A single application is run under a wide range of input conditions and the results of these different runs are collected together. Parametric executions are ideally suited to run on large computing clusters, since they produce a lot of jobs, often exceeding thousands. These applications will allow users to tap power of distributed computing.
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