[ILUG] Beowulf System Assembly

[Sean McGrath]

Shane Dempsey wrote:
> 
> Any chance of some performance figures.
> 
> I don't know but every time I hear about a new parallel computer system I
> can't resist the urge to ask "what'll she do mister"

   FEM, raytracing, cryptoanalysis (eg. crack), automated VLSI, weather
   forcasting, drug dose simulation, traffic flow sim, fractals..

> 
> What about compilation. Is there any stuff that in the BEOWULF package
> that I can use to speed up compilation of a rather huge program.
> 

   gnumake has a flag to enable distributed making
    the '-j X' where X is the number of jobs to run, '-j' 
    on its own lets make have any number of jobs.

   The jobs run on either the local machine via fork or on
   other machines.  See the make manual for details..

> Or would the time taken to pass data across the network not make
> distributed compiles worthwhile.

  with make and an NFS'd disk, should be all right.
  with an SMP machine and local disk, then you're talking.

> 
>         ...shane D
> 

Sean.
.