So, I'm bored, waiting for a lecture to start in,... 3 and a half hours, likely should find something 'productive' to do, but anyway. How hard would it be to get cheap motherboards with built in NIC, cheap ram, and a midrange processor for each, and wire them up to boot from network, and get a powersupply that I can run multiple boards off of? Or will I be stuck having to get a single powersupply for each motherboard and a small harddrive for each computer? Is this possilbe, drop a few thousand on a my own personal sup-super computer? I'm thinking each one doesn't really 'need' an actual harddrive, and that would just be extra cost and power use that isn't needed, none of them need anything like sound or graphics, and the case is something I can fab myself. Then there is the question of, what to do with it?

Well usually a lot of Micro-ATX boards fit your bill. Tend to be cheap, and have integrated nics and video. I can't speak for a lot of others like via, or ati, but usually the ones that use the nvidia lans have network boot capability. As far as powersupplies for multiple motherboards, that would be a little more speciallized. I don't think I've seen any in common stores. In fact it might even be more expensive than buying a bunch of cheap 250-300 watt supplies.

I don't know of any power supplies that normally support multiple motherboards, but if each one is just a MoBo, RAM, a midrange processor, and an onboard NIC, they should use little enough power that you could run multiple ones off of a decent supply. I wouldn't recommend running all of them off of a single supply, but you'd probably be fine running three of them off of a 750W supply. You'll probably have to make a spider connector for the motherboard connector, though.

While you can boot from the network, it's been my experience that paging over the network is seldom a good idea.

If you want cheap density, you should also look at various blade server solutions (although they typically up-charge for being "enterprise class") which are basically the idea you have, taken to a server room level. Dell and IBM are two examples of vendors. I believe IBM are among the denser you can currently get, especially if you get their Cell based blades (assuming you want "raw" compute power).

As for what to do with the system, I agree it's hard to decide. There are so many worthy causes:
- M-prime
- Folding@Home
- SETI@Home
- Ray tracing
- distcc server
- X-box key cracking
- etc...

:-)

I hadn't thought about blade servers, but after a bit of poking around, they look like they'll be more expensive to buy a blade rack, plus blades, vs building a rack, and using standard power supplies and mother boards. Unless I'm missing something.

Oh well, I'll likely never get around to building my own system, maybe I'll be able to convince the CS Chair that we could really use a large cluster that we can use for our own stuff, and then rent out free time to other groups.

You mean something like: This?

Proof of concept anyhow, multiple compute nodes racked together, running from a single PSU. small HDDs on each node with a larger drive on the "master" node.

None of the via boards are what I'd call powerfull, and more powerful boards of this size come at a signifigant premium. So a cheap mATX core 2 duo board would be a big win from a compute density standpoint, as well as performance/watt overall.

Sounds alot like something Ive been considering for the last few years (to be used for a game/simulation that has rather high requirements for AI CPU resources).


Consider also power requirements (10 x 150 watt chopped computers is 1500 continuous load on a wall socket).

Consider the air conditioning you will need to dissipate that 1500 watts.
(and proper airflow since this wont likely be in a closed case...)

And 10X would be only a small 'toy' cluster.

Quote: Original post by ravyne2001
You mean something like: This?

Proof of concept anyhow, multiple compute nodes racked together, running from a single PSU. small HDDs on each node with a larger drive on the "master" node.

None of the via boards are what I'd call powerfull, and more powerful boards of this size come at a signifigant premium. So a cheap mATX core 2 duo board would be a big win from a compute density standpoint, as well as performance/watt overall.

I looked at the Via which has a processor rated about that of a fast 486.

I calculated that you'd need 10 of them (actually using EPIA V10000) to get the performance of a somewhat fast P4, and the P4 rig was significantly cheaper.
(And that was before the Core 2 Duos ...)

The single P4 would also be all the more faster if your application did fine grained parallel processing because of the lower transfer time (not have to send via LAN as much)

Try the Mac Minis. Core 2 Duo, comes in small package with low power consumption, $599.

Quote: Original post by wodinoneeye

Quote: Original post by ravyne2001
You mean something like: This?

Proof of concept anyhow, multiple compute nodes racked together, running from a single PSU. small HDDs on each node with a larger drive on the "master" node.

None of the via boards are what I'd call powerfull, and more powerful boards of this size come at a signifigant premium. So a cheap mATX core 2 duo board would be a big win from a compute density standpoint, as well as performance/watt overall.

I looked at the Via which has a processor rated about that of a fast 486.

I calculated that you'd need 10 of them (actually using EPIA V10000) to get the performance of a somewhat fast P4, and the P4 rig was significantly cheaper.
(And that was before the Core 2 Duos ...)

The single P4 would also be all the more faster if your application did fine grained parallel processing because of the lower transfer time (not have to send via LAN as much)

Well, it was simply an example, but I highly dispute your claims of needing 10 1ghz Via CPUs to match a single P4. It would probably be on an order of 5-6 to match a 3ghz P4, but certainly not 10. The C7 cores are also faster than the old Via cores by nearly 2x, not to mention that you can get Mini ITX boards sporting P3, P4, Pentium M, Core Duo or Core 2 duo procs -- beside that, a decent MATX board would do just as well.

But I agree that it would be mor eefficient to get about four Core 2 Duo boards, than to attemp many more Vias. With the correct RAM and board selection, combined with ULV processor variants, it would be more efficient in terms of both build and operational costs, while being more powerful.


Mac Minis would also make a prety good platform, they're not Core 2 duos yet, Just plain ol' Core Duo, but they should be making the leap pretty soon, and I think they have Gig-E integrated. They run on something like 10-20 watts even under load. I'd strip them down though. No need for them to have optical drives or shells when they're clustered.