Re: A small query

[Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct@mit.edu>]

Vaidhyanathan Mayilrangam wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I am planning to build a beowulf cluster (just to play around with it).. The
> options I have are either 8 P166 with 32 M of RAM or 3 Duron 600 with 64-128M
> of RAM.. Which one would be a better option ?
>
> My ultimate aim is to to create a debian Beowulf distribution with Beowulf2..

It seems obvious to me that the 3 Duron 600s will be a lot faster at traditional
Beowulf tasks than the 8 P166s (1800 vs. 1333 bogomips, almost certainly more
flops/bogomips, roughly three times the memory bandwidth on each machine, less
paralellization loss over 3 than 8 machines), so it depends on just what you
mean by "just to play around with it".

If you want to look at scalability issues over a cluster, the 8-P166 system
would be a better demonstration system, as you can solve problems over 1, 2, 4
and 8 CPUs and see just how well they scale.  If you want to "create a debian
Beowulf distribution", it sounds like this might involve a lot of compiling, for
which the Durons should be quite a bit faster.  You need to define your goals a
bit more clearly.

By the way, what is Beowulf2?

-Adam P.

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