Message boards :
Number crunching :
cluster computer
Message board moderation
Author | Message |
---|---|
wouter Send message Joined: 10 Jan 11 Posts: 10 Credit: 4,204 RAC: 0 |
I have a lot of bad computers. Pentium 3 and 4. So I thought if I let them all work together that I could do more work. but I know nothing about cluster computers. can anyone help me? already thanks |
-BeNt- Send message Joined: 17 Oct 99 Posts: 1234 Credit: 10,116,112 RAC: 0 |
I have a lot of bad computers. I believe that the BOINC client along with relevant parts of the Seti@Home applications would have to support clustering but I'm not totally sure because #1. I've never messed with clustering for BOINC and #2. I'm not sure what all it would entail. There are several articles out there on how to setup Windows and Linux clusters. There is an article in the wiki about it but's it's pretty vague, and I think it is talking about actually running them seperately instead of as a one 'super computer' http://www.boinc-wiki.info/Creating_a_diskless_cluster. Here is another thread about it here, http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=47382 the last post says: Using VCS, I have succesfully ran BOINC as a service group in a 2 node cluster (Solaris 10) using veritas cluster. But your results may vary since he was running it on a high availability cluster instead of a real time one. Interesting wish I had enough time and machines to play with it for sure! Traveling through space at ~67,000mph! |
wouter Send message Joined: 10 Jan 11 Posts: 10 Credit: 4,204 RAC: 0 |
thanks |
Bernie Vine Send message Joined: 26 May 99 Posts: 9954 Credit: 103,452,613 RAC: 328 |
|
archae86 Send message Joined: 31 Aug 99 Posts: 909 Credit: 1,582,816 RAC: 0 |
I have a lot of bad computers. Have you considered the cost of power? For machines turned on more than a small fraction of a year, the power cost disadvantage of machines of that era is so bad that even when they are free it is cheaper to turn them off and spend part of the money that would have been spent to power them to buy modern hardware with equal or greater compute power and far lower power consumption. Seriously, unless power is somehow free to you, and you don't care about the person or entity who is paying for it, this might not be wise even if you can work out how to do it. |
Iona Send message Joined: 12 Jul 07 Posts: 790 Credit: 22,438,118 RAC: 0 |
I have a lot of bad computers. Firstly, I'll admit that I know nothing about 'clusters', but what I do know about, is the cost of running 2 X 3.2Ghz P4 machines against the cost of running a single Core 2 6600 machine. There is no comparison - the Core 2 is cheaper to run. Cheaper to run, any way you care to measure it. Even running a fairly lowly 20% of the time, the Core 2 6600 will get through twice the amount of work that the 2 X P4s could (and they were running for far longer), but at lower cost and with far less heat being expended. As archae66 has suggested, you'll have to think carefully about that power use - given that it would not take that long for a cheap (second user) Core 2 system to pay for itself in reduced power costs. As you can probably see, I run a pair of 'Core 2s' and I've not looked back. Don't take life too seriously, as you'll never come out of it alive! |
soft^spirit Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 6497 Credit: 34,134,168 RAC: 0 |
not to mention a single decent GPU will put out more than a room full of P3-P4's. Janice |
wouter Send message Joined: 10 Jan 11 Posts: 10 Credit: 4,204 RAC: 0 |
Thank you all. but I just wanted my old computers for seti and I do not think it really helps when I always miss my deadline. So I was thinking I let them work together. and that I get all my deadlines. |
tbret Send message Joined: 28 May 99 Posts: 3380 Credit: 296,162,071 RAC: 40 |
I don't know that this will help at all, but here goes nothing. The P-III? You can probably safely ditch it. The P-4, however, is a different story. IF your P-4 has a PCIe slot (it doesn't have to be a PCIe-2) - that's a PCIe x16 slot, the long one -- you can pick-up an nVidia GT 240 video card for (right now) $42.00 after rebate from Newegg. I have no idea if that's the cheapest out there right now or not. Unless you have a really flaky power supply (I mean *really* flaky) you shouldn't have any problem running that card in your P-4. So, let's say you are thinking, "Why on Earth would I spend another $42.00 on this old computer?" Because the video cards are MUCH faster SETI crunchers than the computers. As an example - I've got an old P4 1.8GHz machine that does not have a PCIe slot. It's average SETI "credit" is something below 200 per day. I have recently told BOINC not to get any new SETI tasks, and I will retire it from crunching for SETI. I've got another old P-4 3GHz computer that has a PCIe slot on the motherboard. I was using the CPU to do SETI crunching and it would get a few hundred credits per day. I bought a nVidia GT240 for it, stuck it in, loaded drivers, got it working, and walked away. That computer now gets about 5,000 credits per day. The nVidia GT240 (which is a slow video card by today's standards) can do as much work in just over an hour as the P-4 1.8GHz computer was doing all day and all night. It just doesn't make any sense to continue to use the electricity on these old computers *unless* you can stick a CUDA-capable video card in them. I have another "old" computer (Phenom quad core) that I stuck a nVidia GT9800 in. In theory the 9800 should be faster than the GT240. The cheapest I see the GT 9800 is about $90. I would not recommend spending the extra money on the GT 9800. The 9800 seems to get hotter than the 240 and it (at least mine) is more prone to producing errors. The 9800 has a theoretical advantage over the 240, but in MY EXTREMELY LIMITED EXPERIENCE the 240 does as much "useful" work as the 9800, maybe more. My 9800 was branded PNY and my 240 is branded ASUS. In my case, I had to restrict the number of CPU cores running SETI on the Phenom quad core to keep the case temperatures down. (I am using only one of four cores for SETI, plus the video card. My system monitor shows that I have one core idling, two cores doing very little, and one core busy with SETI.) So IF your P-4 motherboard has a PCIe slot and you are willing to spend $40 on a video card, you can make it a "useful" cruncher. The more powerful nVidia cards do 10 times the work, are 4 to 10 times as expensive, and would mean you had to spend even more money on a new power supply to run them. You aren't going to win many races with a GT 240, but you will get a lot more work done per watt and per hour than with your CPU. If you don't have a PCIe slot on your P-4 motherboard, you could let it do as much as it will do, anyway. I love the idea of a computing cluster, but I have sincere doubts that the outcome would out-strip even a net $40 CUDA-capable video card. The P-4 1.8GHz I am retiring is only the first of several "retirement parties" I am planning in the near future. |
wouter Send message Joined: 10 Jan 11 Posts: 10 Credit: 4,204 RAC: 0 |
I'm not sure that a p-III or p-4 can calculate a seti work within the deadline. |
Gundolf Jahn Send message Joined: 19 Sep 00 Posts: 3184 Credit: 446,358 RAC: 0 |
I'm not sure that a p-III or p-4 can calculate a seti work within the deadline. I have a PIII 700MHz notebook running setiathome_5.27 under NT4. It needs about 10 hours (VHAR) to 38 hours for a work unit. Gruß, Gundolf |
wouter Send message Joined: 10 Jan 11 Posts: 10 Credit: 4,204 RAC: 0 |
thanks and to get more off topic i have a ati hd 4XXX serie on my motherboard. can i use him in a combination with a hd 5770 to compute for Collatz Conjecture. i am in school right now and i will look more info up when i am home. |
Claggy Send message Joined: 5 Jul 99 Posts: 4654 Credit: 47,537,079 RAC: 4 |
I'm not sure that a p-III or p-4 can calculate a seti work within the deadline. I have a PIII 800E @896MHz that does Astropulse, Wu's take about 148 hours (6 days) with Optimised Astropulse, Claggy |
Tazz Send message Joined: 5 Oct 99 Posts: 137 Credit: 34,342,390 RAC: 0 |
I'm not sure that a p-III or p-4 can calculate a seti work within the deadline. My AMD K6-2 850 MHz does 1 wu in a little over a day, 2 days if any other programs are running. </Tazz> |
OzzFan Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 15691 Credit: 84,761,841 RAC: 28 |
I'm not sure that a p-III or p-4 can calculate a seti work within the deadline. The fastest official K6-2 ran at 550MHz. There may have been a 600MHz laptop version. 850MHz sounds like an original Athlon CPU. |
OzzFan Send message Joined: 9 Apr 02 Posts: 15691 Credit: 84,761,841 RAC: 28 |
but I just wanted my old computers for seti For comparison, I've had SETI@Home running on an old Pentium Classic 233MHz CPU and not miss deadlines. More recently I have a dual Pentium III 700MHz that can make deadlines too, but it runs 24/7. It's ok to miss a few deadlines while BOINC gets a better idea about how often your computer is turned on, allowed to crunch, and it's FPU abilities. So I was thinking I let them work together. Unfortunately, SETI@Home does not support clusters. It would treat each node in the cluster as a separate machine; it would not see them as one giant machine. BOINC could be rewritten to support clustering, but then that would defeat the purpose of using spare CPU cycles. Many people here create spare CPU cycles just to donate to crunching (as is their choice, I'm not knocking it) by having multiple machines up and running 24/7 (including myself), but that's above and beyond the intention of the BOINC system to only use what you don't when your computer is on. |
ML1 Send message Joined: 25 Nov 01 Posts: 20147 Credit: 7,508,002 RAC: 20 |
Is it worthwhile putting a recent GPU card into an "old clunker" to then do mainly GPU crunching? Or would that be wasted effort for the returns? Happy crunchin', Martin See new freedom: Mageia Linux Take a look for yourself: Linux Format The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3) |
skildude Send message Joined: 4 Oct 00 Posts: 9541 Credit: 50,759,529 RAC: 60 |
It's probably better to invest in a signle GPU that you can install in an older rig than to replace everything with a new cpu/mobo/PSU/ram etc. In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face. Diogenes Of Sinope |
James Sotherden Send message Joined: 16 May 99 Posts: 10436 Credit: 110,373,059 RAC: 54 |
I'm not sure that a p-III or p-4 can calculate a seti work within the deadline. My old P4 2.53GHZ running with Opp apps Does all its work in time. AP takes me 31 hours MB any where from 5 to 9 hours. Depending on angle range. I have a bunch of vlars one will be done in about 9 hours. Now granted the P4s meager rac is low, But it Hardly ever does a bad work unit. Its been crunching SETI since 2004 24/7. Im hoping to replace it next year with another i7. [/quote] Old James |
wouter Send message Joined: 10 Jan 11 Posts: 10 Credit: 4,204 RAC: 0 |
Thank you all. I think here all my questions answered. So, Basically 1. it is better to separate all nodes. 2. it is better to invest in a GPU. 3. P-III and P-4 can both get the deadline easily. |
©2024 University of California
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.