Debian Beowulf (was Re: New maintainer - intent to package LAM 6.1)
On Sun, 12 Jul 1998, Jules Bean wrote:
> As an aside, I was told yesterday that beowulf had been ruled
> non-exportable, since it creates a supercomputer from PCs, and
> super-computers are non-exportable.
W R O N G.
There is N O R U L I N G of any kind to this effect.
Can we please kill this one stone dead right here and now?
[ This unfortunate rumour/myth (the result of the usual sorry tale of
human greed, jealousy, concupiscence, bureacratic power politics and crass
idiocy, I am given to believe -- I wasn't on the spot, but can read
between the lines with the best of 'em) almost wrecked the Beowulf
Project in the US last month, but is now over. The dog is dead.
Let it lie. ]
For facts, please see the (new) GSFC/NASA site:
http://beowulf.gfsc.nasa.gov/
The (old) sites:
http://cesdis.gfsc.nasa.gov/beowulf/
and:
http://www.beowulf.org/
are probably still accessible, but both have officially been replaced by
the first.
Doubting Thomases, conspiracy theorists and prophets of doom who
missed all the hoo-hah last month and are still unwilling to relinquish a
good bit of juicy gossip should contact:
Phillip Merkey <Merk@cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov>
for horse's mouth details.
Better still, subscribe to the beowulf lists -- (see web beowulf site).
[ And in any case, "beowulf" is an idea; a concept -- that of creating a
low-cost high-performance parallelized computing cluster from
off-the-shelf components (at about 1/10 the cost of a commercial
supercomputing cluster).
As such, the idea of the Beowulf-class architecture has _already_ been
exported all over the world; and indeed, with the recent sudden explosion
in take-up of the idea, beowulf-class machines are now being built at a
phenomenal rate (one a day, I would personally guess), as schools/colleges
just convert their daytime classroom workstations into nighttime
clusters, and start playing supercomputers.
<NOSTRADAMUS>
It's a re-run of 1978, when Apple+VisiCalc took over corporate workdesks
to the total dismay of the big-iron boys -- this time the propeller-heads
are standing by, gobsmacked, as supercomputing takes itself off out the
research labs and into primary and secondary schools. In two years' time,
no self-respecting rock band will be without its own beowulf-type
supercomputer.
</NOSTRADAMUS> ]
> So are the beowulf tools going to have to go in non-us?
No.
Full contents of the current Redhat Extreme Linux CD can be FTPed from:
ftp://beowulf.gsfc.nasa.gov/mirror/extreme_linux/
For parallel supercomputing applications under Linux, see the Scientific
Applications on Linux (SAL) site at:
http://SAL.KachinaTech.com/C/
(few, if any, are debianized. So what are you all waiting for? :)
For a (descriptive) list of beowulf sites (with pretty piccies), see:
http://yara.ecn.purdue.edu/~pplinux/Sites/Index.html
Two beowulf sites that I know are based on the debian distribution are:
http://www.arc.unm.edu/ *well worth a visit*
http://www.lobos.nih.gov/
Or you could always visit the (currently rather chaotic) site that Andrew
and I have putatively put up as a Debian beowulf jump-station. (Contents
likely to abrupt change at nil notice -- our primary aim is to get a
debian version of the Extreme Linux CD together as quickly as possible):
http://www.startext.co.uk/beowulf/
All comments, offers of help, etc., welcomed.
Enjoy.
-Martin Wheeler - StarTEXT, Glastonbury, Somerset, England - BA6 9PH
--
mwheeler@startext.co.uk http://www.startext.co.uk/
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