On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 09:20:08PM -0500, Bob Kerstetter scratched on the wall:
> What don't we change the thread name. So here is David's question with
> an appropriate subject line.
Good idea.
> On Jul 27, 2004, at 8:57 PM, David Buttrick wrote:
>
> >While I'm here, I should ask what's the difference between an xgrid
> >cluster, and a beowulf?
A lot of this depends on what you call a Beowulf. If you ask a dozen
people, it seems you'll get about 14 different answers.
I've been doing a lot of research into the history and development of
low-cost clusters (I'm working on a publication), and my own working
definition is that a "Beowulf Cluster" is any cluster that is made up
of 100% "COTS" hardware (Commodity, Off-The-Shelf). This means mass
produced machines (e.g. desktops or fairly inexpensive rack units)
using an easily available and inexpensive networking technology, such
as Ethernet (which is about it, these days).
Most of this definition comes from the book "Beowulf Cluster Computing
with Linux" and its sister book "Beowulf Cluster Computing with
Windows", which are out-growths of the book "How to Build a Beowulf."
If you read through the long list of authors for these books, you'll
see a lot of names that are pretty core to low-cost cluster computing,
so I would tend to follow their lead.
Linux seems to be extremely common, but Windows, Mac OS X, or any
other "consumer desktop" OS is acceptable. Some would claim Linux is
the only true system, although most of the people saying that are
Linux types who think anything UNIX-like was invented by the Linux
community. Similar comments could be made about the system having
x86 hardware of some flavor. If anyone else has a definition, please
throw it out (along with a source, if you have it)-- I love to hear stories.
Anyways, If we stick with that definition for now, then most Mac clusters
are "Beowulfs," the exception being if you use a high-speed/low-latency
interconnect like Myrinet or InfiniBand.
So the question kind of brings us back to what Xgrid is, and what it
provides, vs. a more traditional cluster. Xgrid really is more of a
grid technology than a cluster technology, so the question is then
"what's the difference between a cluster and a grid?" which is a huge
discussion in and of itself.
Formal membership, centralized administration, fixed topology, and a
lot of other things account for the difference between clusters and
grids. Others can provide more discussion if you wish.
> > Is there MPI for xgrid?
Yes, but I'm fairly sure it is only on the OS X side of things. See
the release notes.
-j
--
Jay A. Kreibich | Integration & Software Eng.
email@hidden | Campus IT & Edu. Svcs.
<http://www.uiuc.edu/~jak> | University of Illinois at U/C
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