Re: How do you setup an Alpha cluster

[Uncle George <gatgul voicenet com>]

Well, what is exacly the architecture of the faster/mo-expensive multi-alpha boxes
made by other manufacturers. i suppose that would give u a hint on how to connect
them together. But i suppose the speed performence is from a shared memory system.

gat

Gary A. Allen wrote:

> Folks,
>
> A bunch of us at the STA Branch of the NASA Ames Research Center are sold on
> the idea of using an array of Alphas running on PCI bus motherboards to do
> scientific computations.  Our ideas are currently embryonic:  We are thinking
> of having several desktop Alphas with Linux and Windows-NT partitions
> (Windows-NT for shrink-wrap software and Linux for doing real scientific work)
> and also having a large cluster of Alphas dedicated to scientific computations
> using parallel algorithms. The large cluster would run with Linux as the
> operating system and use applications compiled with the best legal compiler
> available for Linux.  Our machines would all be based on the new OEM Samsung
> chips and motherboards.   All of the generic PC stuff (cases, CRTs, keyboards,
> video cards, hard disks, etc.) would be purchased at bottom dollar from local
> vendors.  We would assemble the machines in-house and wire them together using
> high speed Ethernet connections.
>
> The basic idea is our engineer/scientists would use their desktop machines
> for code development or pure scalar computations and farm out their extremely
> parallel algorithm CPU intensive work to the Alpha cluster.  The primary
> scientific application would be trajectory and computational fluid dynamic
> simulations of spacecraft entering planetary atmospheres.
>
> Great minds work alike!  I understand that a bunch of people at Los Alamos and
> other places have built up Alpha clusters based on PCI bus motherboards and
> the special effects for Titanic came from the same sort of architecture.  I'm
> a newbie humbly seeking advise from people who have actual experience building
> these systems.  Is this basic concept a dumb idea?   For example: would fast
> Intel or AMD chips running Linux be a better approach.  Is using Linux a dumb
> idea?  Should I (shudder) be using only Windows-NT?  What are the hidden
> pitfalls one encounters with an Alpha cluster that do not appear until after
> the system has been built and running for a few weeks?  Is using an Ethernet
> message passing approach the best basis for an Alpha cluster running parallel
> code?   What's the optimal top CPU speed for an Alpha cluster?  For example
> if the Ethernet latency is the primary data bottleneck then a cluster based
> upon the more expensive 800 Mhz. CPUs might perform no better than 533 Mhz.
> CPUs.  Our goal is to maximize CPU-cycles/dollar.  We understand that there
> are faster architectures out there (Cray T3D) but we can not afford them.
>
>                             Thanks in advance!
>                             Gary A. Allen, Jr.
>
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