Cluster Folding Discussion

[shbris]

A few people have been discussing this, with the upcoming increase in min. cores for the higher performing CPU clients

This trend is likely to continue in the future, from 16 cores upwards, so having a scaleable work environment could be more future proof in terms of adding 'new' cores in the future.

And when including bonus points for quick unit return, one cluster of two (+) computers might perform better than the sum of their parts if they're working on one unit together.

So, lets compare notes/research here, post any links we can find on the subject, and discuss possible setups etc. I personally am very interested in this subject for my first dedicated rig, buying lower priced/older hardware and putting them together could be a frugal way of building a great rig.

[Tattysnuc]

Got my gigabit network working tonight, which is one of the advised requisites for BCCD

http://bccd.net/

Am going to have a go when I get back to the UK at setting up a framework of virtual machines at home and see what's involved. I inadvertent started the discussion over on Bit-tech as a wish list not realising that there was already software in existence.

See: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=218197

and then the subsequent follow on discussions.

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=220531

If anyone gets it going first, it'll probably be one of those guys.

No-ones actually done anything yet as far as I have seen

Tattysnuc

[shbris]

everything i came up with were just groups of individual clients. i shall follow the bit tech progress, but kinda don't think they need the points!

[Tattysnuc]

I've just run the BCCD ISO and can't see how to link together multiple machines to form a single one. Anyone got any ideas?

I've looked at http://bccd.net/wiki/index.php/Network_Environment but I'm not understanding how it works.

[shbris]

looks like the PC you first load on is the 'master' PC. do you have any you link to, or just solitary unit?

[shbris]

looked at a thread on fah forums: http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=17373

seems like each node has a performance penalty of around 8%, so i think a node system would only work with 2 x 8 threaded i7 machines, not a big collection of 4 thread atoms as i envisaged

[Tattysnuc]

Yeah, it does read as though the performance stinks. Shame, but to be expected I suppose when you think about how it would work...

We've just got 2 64 thread machines in work, and I'm desperate to see how they'd fold. No chance though - I value my job!

End of lunch....

[shbris]

how about this:

run 2 instances of cluster software on virtual machines (on a 2600k for example) each addressing all 8 cores, for 16 overall. third instance is the main 'hub' instance, running linux addressing 16 'cores' to run bigbeta