Any Beowulfs for Macs (esp. Nubus Macs)?

[Bob Beaton <bobb@vt.edu>]

Hello,

I've been lurking on this list for pointers as I try to come up to speed on
Beowulf configurations for Linux. I hope no one minds me asking an obviously
newbie question: Has anyone setup a beowulf using strictly Macintosh
hardware?

I think I saw a recent post with a version of my question, with an extended
reply suggesting (as I recall) that Macs have been too expensive (compared
to Intel HW) to attract much interest by your community. While that might be
true, I have a slightly different motivation for my question. Specifically,
I have a bunch of older PowerMacs (7100s, 8100s, 8500s) in my lab, which all
work fine and seem much too good to salvage. Moreover, I need to do a lot of
computational work (mostly 2D FFTs and signal processing and virtual
environment algorithms) that I'd like to off-load from my daily-use
machines.

Moreover, I recently discovered that the older, Nubus-based (as opposed to
PCI-based) Macs can run a developmental version of the Linux 2.4 kernel.
This development means that older Nubus-based PowerMacs have more options
available than MkLinux, such as LinuxPPC and Debian. It seems to me, then,
that a port of the Beowulf (and associated parallel processing) software
would at least be reasonable, given that hardware expense is not an issue
for me.

I'd very much appreciate any thoughts and pointers on my question. I am
aware of some current limitations, such as a lack of drivers to Nubus-based
100BaseT ethernet cards, as well as some current alternatives, such as
AppleSeed for the MacOS. I'd real like to get these machines crunching
numbers under a Linux environment.

Many thanks,
Bob

P.S. I really enjoy this list--it has been very helpful to me as I learn my
way through things. I know I have a looooong way to go yet!