multiple clients/processes on a dedicated machine

[hellokeith]

I have a few old 600-800MHz PC's laying around that I could load up Linux and dedicate towards distributed clients. My questions are:

1) Can multiple clients/processes be run on the same machine without interfering with each other?
2) If yes to #1, what is the best way to do this?
3) If yes to #1, what's the max # of simultaneous clients/processes that a particular PC of speed X can support?

 

[BlackMountainCow]

Yes!

The easiest way would be to use BOINC. (Take a look into our welcome thread here in the DC forums). With BOINC, you can attach to several projects all at once, and they'll evenly share your CPU time. An important point for your PCs is memory, though. How much do they have? Some BOINC projects need a lot, others less. But if they have anywhere around 256MB of RAM, I'd say you can run any project you'd like to (except Climate prediction, which would literally take years to complete a single work unit).

If you have more questions, just ask!

:beer:

 

[Spacehead]

Assuming those will be single CPU computers, then you really only want to run 1 project at a time. But as BlackMountainCow suggested, BOINC will let you divide up the time between various projects you may want to run.

I guess the first thing you'd want to do is figure which projects you're interested in & go from there.