It's hip, it's cool, it's a Mac cluster...

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It's hip, it's cool, it's a Mac cluster...

I was surfing the Apple website and came across a streaming Quicktime video on high performance computing and became rather intrigued. I delved a little deeper, deeper, deeper, and found a couple of interesting sites and a cute little puppy named Pooch.

Anyway, I had been under the misguided impression that parallel processing, or cluster computing, was limited to Mac OS X and UNIX based OSes like Linux or BSD. How wrong I was, and how delighted I was to learn that I was wrong.

"Honey, I was wrong. Can you forgive me?"

My Mac's always forgive me! And I love 'em for it.

Anyway, again with the anyway, it appears that Mac's running OSes as old as 8.6 can be clustered. It's true. Hey, would I lie to you? It's called Project Appleseed and it was created by UCLA. You can checkout this link for more info:

http://exodus.physics.ucla.edu/appleseed/appleseed.html

But what I really wanna know is whether anybody here has done it. So, have you done it? Have you clustered?

Cuz I wanna cluster too!

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Re: Clustering

I have downloaded the software for mac os 8.6 and earlier, but have not had the oppotunity to test it yet, if you try it, please tell me how it goes. If I try it, I will inform you here.

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Varying degree's of success

I have had varying degree's of success with the Mac OS 8.6 software.

Using "Launch Mother Den" & "Launch Puppy" with Mac OS 8.6 on a 5200 and G3 was successful. When I added the 7200 to the cluster, there were problems finding "Launch Puppy" on the 7200. The cluster failed.

When I added the 7300 to the cluster, replacing the 7200, there were also problems finding "Launch Puppy" on the 7300. The cluster failed.

When I initiated the cluster from the 7300, the cluster succeeded to the point of locating and launching "Launch Puppy" on the 5200 & G3 but then crashed.

Final result:

The cluster was successful using only two computers. Adding the third computer, with the Mac OS 8.6 software, caused the cluster to fail.

I will attempt to use the Mac OS 9 software, "Pooch", next. I will report my results here.

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Oops, I forgot to post the results...

When I ran the Fractal program on the 5200, a 75MHz 603e PPC computer, the fractal algorythm completed in 86 seconds.

When I ran the Fractal program on the 5200/G3 cluster, the fractal algorythm completed in 44 seconds.

I would suspect that much better results would have been achieved if the cluster had not evenly divided the task among the two machines.

When I install the Mac OS 9 software, I will limit the cluster, initially, to just the G3 and 200MHz 604e 7300. I will add other machines from that point.

This stuff is really interesting. I downloaded a Solar System Simulator that also takes advantage of parallel processing. I will use that software in my next cluster trial.

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