Single Board Computers & Clusters

[tigakub]

Hi, I don't know if this is the right place to post this but ...

I'm interested in building my own 5 to 10 node P4 "cluster" (if that's the right term) in a single enclosure. I've been looking at SBC from Taiwan and the US. They're all rated "PICMG" compliant, but when I look at the backplanes available, they typically only have 2 or 3 PICMG sockets. The rest are PCI or ISA. Can you plug a PICMG SBC into a PCI or ISA slot, or are the PCI/ISA slots for expansion cards only?

What is the best way for me to build a (relatively) inexpensive cluster? Would it be more cost-effective (if not space-saving) for me to just buy a bunch of regular PCs?

Can anyone recommend a good source for SBCs/backplanes/chassis?

Thanks.

 

[theinsen1]

well hello there tigakub!!
you must have lot of money to build a p4 cluster.
normally its better to use athlonxp or sempron.
but i guess there are few people who will be able to help you out.
hey networkman some help here .
any one else having any know how please help this dude.
also tigakub!! hopefully u put those cluster to do some crunching??

 

[tigakub]

Originally posted by: theinsen1
you must have lot of money to build a p4 cluster.
normally its better to use athlonxp or sempron.

Good point. Are there any good athlonxp SBC cofigurations out there?

Originally posted by: theinsen1
also tigakub!! hopefully u put those cluster to do some crunching??

Heh.

 

[networkman]

I'm here!

First off, if you've just won the lotto, congratulations! Investing in an SBC system is a good way to blow through all that extra cash. In other words, unless you've got a whole bunch of extra money and/or really tight space requirements, Single Board Computers are NOT the economical way to go.

Second, no, you cannot plug a PICMG board in a regular PCI slot; they may look similar, but electrically, they're different. Also, depending on the design of the passive backplane that you'd be using, PICMG slots are physically located in different spaces than how a typical PCI card is laid out.

Typically, on a passive backplane, you may have 1 PICMG slot(for your SBC card), and then a number of PCI and ISA slots, some of which may be shared. Typically, the draw for the use of SBC systems is the greater number of expansion slots that one can get over a typical PC-based system.

A slightly different beast which I have a fair amount of experience with are "Cubix" systems. Often, those systems would allow for mutilple SBC cards in a single chassis, with shared hard drive space for each of the computers - quite dependent on the OS for support. My experience was with Novell Netware 4.1x server software with a pair of Cubix boxes, each with (6) 486-25 SBC computers inside. It was being used as a dial-up/RAS server at the time. Mucho dollars to purchase and configure. I'm sure you can find some on eBay by now, but who'd want to mess with 486s like that when you can pick up a single P2-350 system for under $50 used? True, it'd be good for experience, which I'm an advocate for as computer technician, but there are limits to what would be practical to be familiar with.

Currently, I have no real experience with Beowulf or clustering, but I do know from reading, that it's as much a software issue as a hardware one. Usually some kind of Linux-type operating system is going to be used -- networking a few Win9x stations isn't the same.

I think you'll find rather quickly that using standard PC configurations is going to be WAY cheaper than any SBC solution you could possibly be looking at - the key is the software that you'll be using, both for the OS and for whatever project it is that you have in mind.

I'd encourage you to read up a bit more on Beowulf concepts and ideas. Some sites to check out would be:

Beowulf.org
fscked.org
Beowulf HOWTO
LinuxHPC

Best of luck to you -- be sure and let us know what you come up with.

*edited for typos and spelling.. prevalent at 5:30am EST