As a builder of some cheapo home clusters I would say that software development (owning the reset switch is nice), problem development (staging a small version of a problem before you scale it up), and running real codes (most HPC apps don't scale that well in any case).
Notice that it makes sense if you are in HPC already, if you are not, you might be hard pressed to find day-to-day uses for a cluster, though playing with parallel cellular automata and genetic algorithms can be fun. BTW, my next home cluster is going to be 18 cores (AMD 2.6GHz) in a single PS and tower case. Best cluster in the neighborhood! Of course I'm still trying to build my HAL 9000 clone. -- Doug > Cute, but my question is, what use is one of these homegrown > platforms? > > Certainly if it was commercialised that would be a beasty compute > appliance... but that's not my question - I'm asking, what is the > role of the home hacker in the HPC world? > > I mean, it's fine to go and make one of these things, but once you've > made it, what do you use it for? > > I ask as I presently have a "grid engine in a briefcase" sitting idle > in my cupboard, fun to make but as I have no datasets to crunch, it's > not even particularly good-looking eye candy! > > I joined this list to get the answer to this question... > > Stu > > On 15 Sep 2010 at 11:05, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > Date sent: Wed, 15 Sep 2010 11:05:44 +0200 > From: Eugen Leitl <eu...@leitl.org> > To: Beowulf@beowulf.org > Copies to: Subject: [Beowulf] How to make a > BeagleBoard > Elastic R Beowulf Cluster in a > Briefcase > >> >> http://antipastohw.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-to-make-beagleboard-elastic-r.html >> >> -- >> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org";>leitl</a> http://leitl.org >> ______________________________________________________________ >> ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org >> 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE >> _______________________________________________ >> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing >> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit >> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > > > > --- > Stuart Udall > stuart a...@cyberdelix.dot net - http://www.cyberdelix.net/ > > --- > * Origin: lsi: revolution through evolution (192:168/0.2) > > _______________________________________________ > Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing > To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit > http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf > > -- > This message has been scanned for viruses and > dangerous content by MailScanner, and is > believed to be clean. > -- Doug -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
