BootBlocks.

[talon at lpthe.jussieu.fr]

Pieter Dumon wrote:

> On 6/3/06, talon at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <talon at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>>
>> I understand that. I am also extremely sceptic on the interest of
>> the cluster stuff
> 
> Well, there's a lot of different cluster types of course, but I can
> give an example of a possible userbase that would be very interested:
> We have a small cluster for scientific computing (long and short
> running calculations), currently running Gentoo Linux with openMOSIX.
> Not that we think of moving to another OS in the near future, but it
> definitely is an example of an interested userbase: running a
> collection of relatively cheap machines seamlessly, with an "it just
> works" philosophy would be great. (it isn't "seamless" currently, as
> for instance openmosix doesn't very well support threading)

So we have similar background. I was also thinking scientific computing,
and like you having seen that threading such computations between several
machines is not working well, or sort of works only after considerable
programming effort, which in most cases is not really justified, this is
the reason why i am extremely sceptic on the interest of cluster
computing. I am convinced that multiprocessors with large number of
processors and enormous memory will come soon and will be cheap, like
the Niagara. This is exactly what Matt was saying. And i am convinced that 
this is the sort of machines which is the best target for our needs, like
it has always been in the past.



> As for style, I'd like to refer too the Gentoo Linux docs:
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/list.xml
> They are really great. 

I think the same.


-- 
Michel Talon