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<title>Donald Becker Speaks about Beowulf at NYLUG LG #42</title>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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<H1><font color="maroon">From Word Processors to Super Computers<br>
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Donald Becker Speaks about Beowulf at NYLUG</font></H1>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:adler@bnl.gov">Stephen Adler</a></H4>
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<P> Editor's note: In the
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<A HREF=http://ssadler.phy.bnl.gov/adler/DB/DonaldBecker.html>
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original article</A> on Adler's website, many of the
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inline images display a larger copy of themselves when clicked on. These
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larger images are not included in the <EM>Linux Gazette</EM> version, to
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keep the total size of the <EM>Gazette</EM> small.
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<hr>
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<br>
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I got an e-mail over the weekend announcing that Donald Becker would
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be addressing the NYLUG on May 19th. That's the New York Linux users
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group for those of you out west. From out here on Long Island, NYC is
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a long way away. But I figured I would rough out the commute into NYC
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to catch what Donald had to say about his Beowulf project. Actually,
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if you can keep a secret, I'll admit to having fun writing up my
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encounters with Internet luminaries like Donald and publishing them on
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the Internet. This would give me a chance to do so once again, so the
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long commute into NYC didn't seem so bad.
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<p>
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<table align=left>
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<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
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A rainy day in New York City, and I'm hustling around looking for a
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parking lot.
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</font></caption>
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<tr><td>
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<img src="gx/adler.becker/DB02Small.jpg" vspace=10 hspace=20>
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</table>
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Wednesday came flying along, I spent most of the afternoon beating up
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on an alpha personal workstation 433au, trying to get Linux installed
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on it. Hey, Red Hat 6.0 was out and since they have a generic kernel
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which seems to run on all Alpha variants, I figured this should be a
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snap. <b>Wrong!</b> For some reason, MILO refuses to boot up on the
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machine. I've been trying off and on to get alpha/Linux installed on
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this machine since January. It belongs to a professor at Stony Brook
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who is a real Linux enthusiast, and started down the path of the Linux
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install, and ran into this MILO problem. I gave it a try, a graduate
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student from Columbia gave it a try, and we have all failed. The <a
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href="http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/html2/tour2.html">Relativistic Heavy Ion
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Collider</a> is coming on line soon so we don't have much time to
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spend on this box. It has become somewhat like King Author's
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sword. Who ever can pull that sword out of the rock, or install Linux
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on that machine, will lead a blessed life... Roy, (The professor who
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owns the Alpha) has now put up a reward for who ever can get Linux
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installed on the damn thing. The reward right now stands at 2 tickets
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to see the NY Yanks. (Or Knicks if you are of that persuasion...)
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<br clear="left">
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<p>
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<table align=right>
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<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
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Gucci bags and Rolex watches for sale abound. Where are the damn
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umbrella sellers!
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</font></caption>
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<tr><td>
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<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB04Small.jpg vspace=10 hspace=20>
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</table>
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Time flies when you are having trouble getting Linux installed on
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something, as it did that Wednesday afternoon. I ended up missing the
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4:05pm train into Penn Station and decided to drive in. To my dismay,
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it would have taken just as long to wait for the next train, as it
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would have to drive in. Rain poured out of the sky as I topped 20MPH
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speeds on the Long Island Expressway heading west into Manhattan. I
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wanted to get to the meeting in time to be able to meet Donald and the
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rest of the NYLUG members. That was just not going to happen. At this
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rate, I would be lucky to get to hear him speak at all.
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<p>
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It's 6:20pm and I'm heading up 3rd Ave in search of a parking lot. The
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meeting starts at 6:30pm. Damn, I'm always running just on time. With
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little effort, I was able to find a very reasonable parking lot which
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charged $10 'till closing. It's usually about $25 for a mid town
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parking lot. I dropped the car off, and dash out in search of the IBM
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building where the NYLUG was meeting. Rain is coming down, I'm getting
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soaked, and I'm looking all over the place for those street vendors
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who always have what you don't need at the time. Fake Rolex watches
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were up for sale, as were Gucci bags, but no umbrellas. I could feel
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the rain starting to seep onto my scalp as I ran across Madison,
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heading north towards 57 St.
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<p>
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IBM, a while back, started to get a clue about the benefits of Open
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Source/Free software and has now donated one of their meeting rooms
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for the NYLUG, who meet about once a month. (Rasterman is talking at
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the next one.) The IBM building stands very tall on the corner of 57th
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and Madison. It boasts some modern work of some sort at its entrance.
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One needs to sign in, in order to be let into the building. The
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meeting was being held on the 9th floor.
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<br clear=right>
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<p>
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I arrive to the meeting room where NYLUG is gathered. A projector is
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setup with Donald's laptop plugged into it. There are about 30 or 40
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people present. Jim Gleason, the organizer of the meeting, who works
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for VA Research, is there talking with Donald, looking rather
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busy. He sees me and introduces me to Donald. I have just drove in
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through about 2.5 hours of LIE traffic, dashed across several streets
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and avenues under the rain, and my bladder had been screaming at me
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since exit 40 on the LIE that it needed to be relieved. I couldn't
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concentrate much on what I was saying at the time. I shook hands with
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Donald, and muttered something like, "We use lots of computers at
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BNL". I don't remember how he responded, I think he didn't say
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anything. I then managed to get myself away, find a seat, store my
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laptop and look for a good place to take a photo of the room.
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<br clear=left>
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<p>
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<center>
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<table>
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<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
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A shot of the NYLUG meeting room, courtesy of IBM. By the time Donald's
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talk was well underway, there was basically standing room only.
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</font></caption>
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<tr><td>
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<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB12Small.jpg>
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</table>
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</center>
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<p>
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Jim Gleason took the mike, and called on people to sit down. He wanted
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to get the meeting going on time, (it was getting close to 7pm by
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now). I settled down into my seat, booted my laptop, and proceeded to
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ignore my aching bladder. I had more important business to take care
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at the time.<p>
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<p>
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<table align=left>
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<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
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A solemn moment for Jim Gleason, the VA Research guy who is one of the
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NYLUG contacts and organizers. Actually, the shot was taken as he
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happened to look down at his notes. The only time he did so during his
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introduction. Murphy's law is at work here. Jim is a very energetic
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guy who is excited about his work.
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</caption></font>
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<tr><td>
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<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB14Small.jpg vspace=10 hspace=10>
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</table>
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At this point, I started to take notes, as Donald start talking. Since
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my notes are always rather jumbled, it will be easer to me to cover in
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broad stokes the topics he talked about instead of trying to give a
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word by word reproduction of what he said.
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<p>
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His introductory slide showed two things. His affiliation with the NASA
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Goddard Space Center and a company called Scyld Computing
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Corporation. My guess is that he has been given the liberty at NASA to
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work with this Scyld startup to help bring the Beowulf into the
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private sector. Good for him. At this point, something rather annoying
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started to happen. The projector which was hooked up to Donald's
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laptop, started to lose sync with it. Donald, who has a bit of
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shyness to himself, was having a hard time giving his talk while at
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the same time, pressing various auto sync buttons on the projector to
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try and get his transparencies back up on the screen. This went on
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through his talk. It really didn't matter since he didn't bother to
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walk through his slides, rather he just talked from the top of his
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head about what he as been doing for that past 7 years.
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<p>
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Donald's talk went on until 8:20pm. During that time I got the
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following out of his talk.
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<p>
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<table align=right>
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<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
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A bad picture of Donald at the beginning of his talk. It looks like my
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camera is getting out of sync with the fabric of space-time. (One of these
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day's I'm going to upgrade my analog camera to a digital one. But with
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the increase in property taxes out on Long Island and the small salary
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a "junior" scientist makes at BNL, it will be some time be for I do so.)
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</caption></font>
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<tr><td>
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<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB15Small.jpg vspace=10 hspace=20>
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</table>
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He introduced the concept of a Beowulf system. Basically, it is a
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cluster of many, off-the-shelf PC's, running Linux, and tied together
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through a high speed, low latency networking infrastructure. The
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network topology of this system tends to be a flat one which makes it
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easier on the application side. Fast Ethernet, tied through a fast
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Ethernet switch is the current network hardware of choice for a
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Beowulf cluster. ATM is too expensive at this point and I believe he
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mentioned that the latency tends to be greater than with fast
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Ethernet. (But don't hold me to that statement.) He did mention that
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the ATM "overhead" was way too large. After the talk was
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over, one of the questions from someone in the audience revealed that
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Beowulf is basically a library of software which one uses to help
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implement a distributed application. This includes facilities such as
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providing a global PID, methods of remote execution of processes, much
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like rsh, etc. There was some mention of mpi/vpm (and mpiII) which are
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parallel processing abstractions sitting above the Beowulf
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distributed processing layer. One of the tasks on my list is to
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clearly learn about this software, but unfortunately, Donald's talk was
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not a HOWTO on using Beowulf to parallelize your application. It was
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more like, "I've worked on Beowulf, and here are some interesting
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things about it...". So, the specifics of Beowulf still elude me.
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<p>
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Donald talked a bit about the open source nature of the project. In
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short, being an open source project was crucial in making it as
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reliable as it is. This also holds for the Linux kernel itself. While
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working on building Beowulf clusters, Donald ran across some problems
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with the Linux kernel which he had to fix. Things like only being able
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to mount 64 file systems got in his way. Having hundreds of PC's
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talking to each other on the network stressed the networking data
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structures in the Kernel which he also had to deal with. Being that he
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had the source code to the kernel he was able to make the Beowulf
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project work. He also took in contributions from outsiders. If the
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contributed software was of relevance and worked well, he would
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include it.
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<p>
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<table align=left>
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<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
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The side of the IBM building, as I face Madison Ave. Thank you IBM for
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letting the NYLUG use your meeting rooms so that we can hear Donald
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speak. Although it would be nice if you guys got a Linux friendly
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projector. Its OK if the projector is not Y2K certified. We'll take it
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any way.
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</caption></font>
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<tr><td>
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<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB09small.jpg vspace=10 hspace=20>
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</table>
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Donald spoke a bit about the history of his project. His first cluster
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was made up of 100MHz DX4Somethings (DX486?). (Due to the projector not
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being able to sync properly to Donald's PC, I could only read part of
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the slides. You have to give credit to the IBM folk though. The
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projector was certified as being Y2K compliant. It had a rather
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official looking sticker on its side saying so...) In 1996, a 2.2
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GF/sec cluster was built, followed by a 10GF/sec system in 1997. This
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was a threshold crossing system. NASA considered 10GF/sec to be the
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minimum computing power for a system to be called a "super
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computer". In 1998, a 40+GF/sec system was put together, (at Los
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Alamos National Laboratory I believe.) What made all this possible was
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the fact that price per performance was gaining rather rapidly for PC
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based machines. The threshold was crossed between 1996/1997 making the
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Beowulf type system competitive with the big Cray type systems. The
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Beowulf project crossed another watershed when a Beowulf system won
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the Gordon Bell prize for $/performance. (I believe this was around
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1997.) The NASA Goddard Space Center at the time had a "Super
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Computer" in its basement, called the T3D I believe. It was a 10GF/sec
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machine. Donald was able, through open source software, a good network
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and cheap PC's, in essence beat it.
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<p>
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Donald spent some time showing pictures of current Beowulf clusters in
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operation. Some were rack mounted systems, some were bunches of PC's
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on a shelfs. The PC's on shelfs Beowulf system is called LOBOS which
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stands for Lots of Boxes on Shelves. One of the systems built in the 19
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inch racks was called the hive due to the noise the large cabinet
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fans made.
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<p>
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<table align=right>
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<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
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The art work standing at the entrance to the IBM
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building. Unfortunately, I can't tell the difference between this and a
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bunch of steel beams welded together.
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</caption></font>
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<tr><td>
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<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB08Small.jpg vspace=10 hspace=20>
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</table>
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Some applications which are currently using Beowulf systems are
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climate modeling, ray tracing and galaxy evolution modeling. He was
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particularly intrigued with the galaxy evolution modeling
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application. In order to model a galaxy, you need to have every star
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in the galaxy, interact with every other star in the galaxy. Gravity's
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force is felt at infinite distances. One would think that this kind of
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find grained application would not work well on a network distributed
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system. But the guys at Los Alamos, came up with a tree structured
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algorithm which mapped very well onto a network topology, thus making
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a Beowulf architecture work for this type of computing problem. NASA
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uses the Beowulfs for image processing of satellite and Hubble
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images. The Hubble images had to be refocused because of the "over
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site" of one of the mirror polishers. One application of satellite
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image processing is to splice together all the satellite photos taken
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from various angles and positions of one area on earth, to form one
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large coherent image.
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<p>
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Some of the specifics about Beowulf clusters he mentioned were the
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following. Usually one of the nodes is set aside and dedicated to
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managing the rest of the nodes in the cluster. It's the job
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distributor. Some very simple techniques are used to keep track of
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which systems have not crashed. A multicast coming from each machine
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is received by the controlling node or it pings the rest of the
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nodes in the cluster. If one of the nodes goes down, the controller
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quits submitting jobs to it. There are some mechanisms within the
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Beowulf software for process migration from one node to another. He
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also talked about how he uses RPM extensively to maintain the software
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on the nodes. He referred to RPM as a "key technology" enabling the
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easy maintainability, software wise, of large clusters of PC's. A
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question came up asking about how he maintains his Beowulf code. He
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didn't answer the question very well. He didn't really want to answer
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the question since he did not want to endorse any kind of source code
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management software like rcs or cvs. But he did stress that RPM was
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key in order to be able to distribute software to may PC's.
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<p>
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<table align=left>
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<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
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Who's that imposter! (I've gotta' upgrade that damn camera...)
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</caption></font>
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<tr><td>
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<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB10Small.jpg vspace=10 hspace=20>
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</table>
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He also talked about the stability of the machines he works with. Most
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of his systems had been up for over a 100 days. I believe some of the
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Beowulf clusters had been up for over 200 days. What is important is
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not that a single machine has been up that long, but that large
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numbers of machines have been up and running for that amount of
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time. Because of the long running nature of a Beowulf cluster, one
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tends not to use the latest and greatest software release of
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anything. He was using a 2.0.3x version of Linux on his machines. He
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also pointed out a critical feature of having the source code
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available for the kernel and all the software which makes up a Beowulf
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system. If there is a bug found, then one can fix it by modifying a
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few lines of code. That one module or program gets recompiled and you're
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off and running again, with a minimum amount of administrative
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work. If one works with closed source systems, it is often the case
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that when a similar small bug is found and fixed, a whole cascade of
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software upgrades result. This is due to the fact that the bug fix
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will come in the form of a new software release. This release then
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upgrades your shared libraries. The shared library upgrades then force
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you to upgrade all your applications and on and on. After which you
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are then forced into revalidating your whole cluster for production
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use. Something which can take a <b>long</b> time. Donald mentioned
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that he validates his systems by running Linux kernel compilations for
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two days to "burn in" his systems.
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<p>
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Donald also spent some time talking about how one runs a
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Beowulf cluster and keeps it reliable. This is done by monitoring the
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hardware for possible future failures. The most common one is due to
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failing fans. There seems to be a host of applications which monitor
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system performance, from the temperature of the boxes, to network
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packet error checking. Keeping an eye on these problems helps keep a
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Beowulf cluster healthy.
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<p>
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<table align=right>
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<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
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Donald answering questions after his talk. I nice shot of his left
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back side.
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</caption></font>
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<tr><td>
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<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB13Small.jpg vspace=10 hspace=20>
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</table>
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One last thing worth mentioning. With all this talk of running Linux
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systems for 100's of days on end, a Windows "story" came up. It turns
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out that there is a bug in the timer software for Windows. It will
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cause your PC to crash in 49 days. This bug was just recently found
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and has been around for a long time. Since a Windows system rarely
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stays up for that long, its has only been until recently that this bug
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has been found.
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<p>
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One person in the audience asked why Donald used Linux as the kernel
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for building up his Beowulf project instead of one of the BSD
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kernels. Donald had an interesting answer to that question. First off,
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the BSD kernels were not as stable as Linux, back when he started
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working on his project. He then proceeded to complain that working
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with the BSD developers was very difficult. They tend to hide the
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development process thus making it harder to contribute the needed
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upgrades. (Remember that Donald had to work with the internal data
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structures of the kernel in order to make his project scale.) He then
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said that these BSD developers had very large egos. "Their ego's would
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fill this room" he said, thus implying the difficulty of working with
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them. He then went on to say that he was quite able to work with
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Linus. Linus was a laid back guy.
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<p>
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<center>
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<table>
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<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
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Another shot of Donald left backside. Although I'm starting to work
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around towards his front. If I'm lucky I may get him looking into the camera.
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</caption></font>
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<tr><td>
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<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB17Small.jpg>
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</table>
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</center>
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<p>
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There were many other interesting questions which were discussed
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during Donald's talk. You can read my <a
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href="http://ssadler.phy.bnl.gov/adler/DB/nylug.5.19.1999.txt">jumbled notes</a> if you care to try and
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decipher them for more information.
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<p>
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|
<table align=left>
|
|
<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
|
|
Well, that's as far forward as I could get. Although I did get a nice
|
|
shot of him and his book which I proudly display at the top of
|
|
this write up.
|
|
</caption></font>
|
|
<tr><td>
|
|
<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB16Small.jpg vspace=10 hspace=20>
|
|
</table>
|
|
The session came to an end about 8:20pm. During his session he plugged
|
|
his
|
|
<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/book-home.tcl?isbn=026269218X">
|
|
new book about Beowulf clusters</a> titled <u>How to Build a
|
|
Beowulf</u>. The book was written in collaboration with several of the
|
|
Beowulf developers and is a compilation of a lot of the tutorials and
|
|
documentation on the software. It's published by MIT Press and fits in
|
|
with the other "definitive" references to mpi, mpiII and pvm also
|
|
published by MIT Press. He said that he makes about 30 cents per book
|
|
sold and was counting up the number of people in the audience to see
|
|
if he could buy dinner with the proceeds if every one bought one. One
|
|
guy in the audience offered him 60 cents for the book he had in his
|
|
hand, doubling his take home profit. Donald declined the offer.
|
|
<br clear=left>
|
|
<p>
|
|
People got up and started to leave the room after the talk was over. I
|
|
stuck around to take some pictures of Donald as he talked to some
|
|
NYLUGers. I eventually was able to get a chance to re-introduce myself
|
|
to him. I have him my card and invited him out to BNL if he were ever
|
|
in the area again. (I'm really bad at this sort of thing.) I then
|
|
asked him if he had trouble getting funding for his first Beowulf
|
|
system. He told me that he got the Beowulf idea back when he was
|
|
working for the NSA. He presented the idea to his superiors. He needed
|
|
$50K to put a cluster of nodes to together. For the NSA, $50K just too
|
|
little to bother with and his request was declined. So he took his
|
|
idea over to NASA. NASA thought it was worth funding, so he got a job
|
|
there specifically to work on his Beowulf idea. The rest, as they say,
|
|
is history.
|
|
<p>
|
|
<center>
|
|
<table>
|
|
<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
|
|
My last shot of Donald as we start receiving our dinner orders. I was
|
|
fortuitous enough to take this shot just as the waiter held Donald's
|
|
plate right over his mouth. It is truly amazing how often Murphy's law
|
|
kicks in. The guy looking right into the camera is named Judd. He
|
|
works for Netscape and announced at the NYLUG meeting an install fest
|
|
he was organizing.
|
|
</caption></font>
|
|
<tr><td>
|
|
<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB01Small.jpg>
|
|
</table>
|
|
</center>
|
|
<p>
|
|
I left the room and spent some time with Jim Gleason in the hallway
|
|
just outside. VA Research is about to deliver a 36 node system to BNL
|
|
this coming week and we talked about that a bit. Suddenly, my
|
|
bladder screamed at me and I broke off in mid sentence, "Where's the
|
|
men's room!". To my fortune, it was about 10 feet behind me. I don't
|
|
know how I was able to ignore my bodily functions from exit 40 of the
|
|
LIE until now...
|
|
<p>
|
|
<table align=right>
|
|
<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
|
|
A picture of the other table where the 2nd half of the NYLUGers hung
|
|
out while waiting for their food to show up.
|
|
</caption></font>
|
|
<tr><td>
|
|
<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB23Small.jpg vspace=10 hspace=20>
|
|
</table>
|
|
A small fraction of the group then headed over to Kapland's deli for a
|
|
real NYC deli meal. I ordered an extra lean pastrami sandwich. In
|
|
typical NY deli fashion, I was delivered just that, a mountain of
|
|
extra lean pastrami sandwiched between two thin slices of rye bread;
|
|
nothing else. The pickles and cole slaw were delivered on dishes as we
|
|
sat down. I had to manually apply the Russian dressing myself.
|
|
<p>
|
|
I sat across one guy who seemed to do business with wall street. One
|
|
tidbit which I found rather interesting was that he had this friend
|
|
who put systems together for wall street trading firms. One would
|
|
assume that these systems are bullet proof; 100% reliable. It turns
|
|
out that they crash all the time. There is enough redundancy in these
|
|
systems so that these crashes can be afforded. After hearing Donald
|
|
talk about large numbers of systems being up for 100's of days at a
|
|
time, and then hearing that wall street trading systems crash
|
|
continuously was a real shock. Maybe wall street will begin to
|
|
understand the power of Open Source. Until then, my retirement
|
|
fund will not be as safe as it could be.
|
|
<p>
|
|
<table align=left>
|
|
<caption align=bottom><font size=-1>
|
|
Another shot of Jim Gleason along with Matthew Hunt and Ari. Ari is
|
|
the guy in the back who also works for VA Research. He's coming out to
|
|
BNL to setup the 36 node machine I'm aching to submit my jobs to. The
|
|
guy in the middle is Matthew Hunt, President of the Linux Users of NY
|
|
group (LUNY).
|
|
</caption></font>
|
|
<tr><td>
|
|
<img src=gx/adler.becker/DB22Small.jpg vspace=10 hspace=20>
|
|
</table>
|
|
At about 9:30pm, Jim Gleason was getting worried about getting Donald
|
|
to JFK to catch his 11:30pm flight to NC. Donald was headed down to
|
|
attend the LinuxExpo. It was getting late for me as well. I said good bye
|
|
to the crowd of NYLUGers and headed out in search of that lot
|
|
where I parked my car. The drive back to where I live on Long Island
|
|
proceeded in standard form. After giving the MTA guy the $3.50 toll
|
|
for using the Midtown Tunnel, I start counting the exists along the
|
|
LI as I drive by them. 1, 2, ... 10, 11, ... 20, ..., 30...
|
|
<p>
|
|
Driving along on the LIE always leads my mind to wandering in
|
|
thought. This time, my mind wandered around open source land. I still
|
|
cannot get a grip on the power of the Internet. What really made
|
|
Donald's project possible was the fact that he had access to
|
|
Linux. You could never build a Beowulf cluster out of windows 3.1
|
|
machines. Think about it, this is what was running on those powerful
|
|
100MHz DX486 machines back when he started this project. I can imagine
|
|
going to one of the NSA administrators and trying to convince him that
|
|
you could take all those PC's the secretaries were using to write up
|
|
memos using MS Word, gang them together and turn them into a super
|
|
computer. And do so for only $50K. Back in 1992, that was a radical
|
|
idea! And look at what we have now, super computers popping up and the
|
|
beginning of a new industry. Also, has anyone ever heard of an NT
|
|
Beowulf cluster? I'm sure Micro Soft would boast of one if there was
|
|
one. (And take credit for the idea as well.) That would be a good way
|
|
to test the stability of NT. Run 100 NT machines in a cluster and see
|
|
how long you would keep them <b>all</b> up and running. It would be
|
|
nice to see Mindcraft perform such a feat. Having 100 Linux machines
|
|
running for over a hundred days translates to 10,000 cpu days of
|
|
continuous running. Benchmark that Mindcraft...
|
|
<p>
|
|
Exit number 67, exit number 68. Ahhh, exit 68, home at last.
|
|
<br><br>
|
|
<hr>
|
|
<br>
|
|
Please <a href="mailto:adler@bnl.gov">e-mail</a> me your comments, if
|
|
you have any. I'm always interested in what you may have to say
|
|
related to this write up or anything else on your mind.
|
|
<p>
|
|
<a href="http://ssadler.phy.bnl.gov/adler/adler/SAArticles.html">Click
|
|
here</a> if you want to read other articles I've published on the
|
|
Internet, or <a href="http://ssadler.phy.bnl.gov/adler/adler">click
|
|
here</a> to view my home page.
|
|
|
|
<!--===================================================================-->
|
|
<P> <hr> <P>
|
|
<center><H5>Copyright © 1999, Stephen Adler <BR>
|
|
Published in Issue 42 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, June 1999</H5></center>
|
|
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