[Mac_crypto] Xgrid -- A first look at Apple's new cluster software

[R. A. Hettinga]

<http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2004/0,4814,88989,00.html>

  - Computerworld

 Xgrid -- A first look at Apple's new cluster software


 By Yuval Kossovsky
JANUARY 12, 2004


 
 
 
 Like many of the Macintosh faithful, I watched Steve Jobs' keynote speech
at MacWorld last week with anticipation, and I wasn't disappointed. The
announcements about the new G5 Xserve and the beefed up Xserve RAID were
just what I had been hoping for in the data center (see story). And if
those new iPod Minis were just $50 cheaper, I'd have bought two by now.

However, the most underplayed news, and yet the most interesting thing to
emerge from the show in my view, was Apple's new Xgrid application. This
software is aimed at scientific applications like gene sequencing, missile
trajectory calculations, cryptography and other incredibly
compute-intensive applications that previously could be crunched only by
supercomputers.

Apple has already proved it can deliver supercomputer technology with a
cluster installation at Virginia Tech (see story), so what does Xgrid bring
to the table?

In typical Apple fashion, Xgrid provides an easy-to-implement solution for
two common problems in the scientific community: The lack of cheap
computing power, and wasted cycles on unused desktops.

Think of Xgrid as a customizable SETI at Home software package for serious
computing folk. The Xgrid software allows you to tie together any number of
desktop machines (Apple suggests using those with G4 and G5 processors) to
work as a single machine to process a job. When one of the computing hosts
is idle, it can join the 'hive' and process part of the currently running
job. For large research institutions such as Penn State University (my
undergrad alma matter), which often have huge student labs that are mostly
idle from midnight to 6 a.m., this is a tremendous computing resource that
can now be harnessed on the Mac side.

The software also allows for anyone with a modicum of programming knowledge
to create his own plug-in enabling the Xgrid software to process custom
jobs. Scientist-programmers are quite common in the biological sciences
field and would be very comfortable with a Unix application that they can
easily customize such as Xgrid. In fact, see it for yourself at Apple's
Advanced Computation GroupWeb site.

I never write about something without taking it for a real-world test
drive, so I downloaded the Xgrid software last week -- though it took me a
few tries. The download link didn't respond in the Safari Web browser, nor
could I access it from the Finder, so I tried a few other tricks, which you
may need to use in order to get the software.

In the Finder, do a connect to server (Apple-k keyboard shortcut) at
ftp://ftp.apple.com/developer/. Then go into the directory called
tool_chest. Inside, you'll see the Xgrid .dmg file. For some reason, I
couldn't FTP directly and had to use this method to get the software. So if
you have problems with the download, try what I did. It's worth it to get
your hands on this software.

Getting the software was the hardest part of setting up Xgrid. Once I had
the .dmg mounted on my desktop, I installed the client on my 15-in. TI
laptop and also on my server, a Power Mac G4 (dual 533 MHz) running Panther
server. Both were set up as clients, and for simplicity sake I didn't
require authentication. It's important to note that you can secure the
Xgrid service so that only authorized Xgrid controllers can use the CPUs in
their cluster. This prevents "rogue clusters" from appearing in your
computing environment.
     

Since both of my nodes were on the same subnet, I was able to use Apple's
Rendezvous software to configure the cluster. If you intend to access
machines on other subnets, you'll need to enter the IP address or DNS name
of the cluster host the service should bind to on those nodes.

To test the software, I used the built-in jobs directing the cluster to
process a Mandelbrot fractal -- first using only one node and then using
both. The processing time for the job was, as expected, cut in half. You
can see both nodes listed below in the X-Blast screenshot and the summary
of available power in the "tachometer."

I can't stress enough how easy it was to set up this software and get Xgrid
up and running. Total time invested was under an hour, including
downloading the software and uninstalling it after my tests. For any
scientific computing environment wishing to take advantage of unused
computing cycles or wanting to achieve some form of supercomputing on a
budget that doesn't allow for InfiniBand cards and multiple racks of
Xserves, this is a great application.
     

Lastly, it occurred to me that this Xgrid could be used in 3-D graphics
processing for applications that are compute-intensive such as MAYA and
SHAKE. I can see this as a real boon to many postproduction shops that have
unused cycles in their editing machines that could be used for rendering
during off-hours. I asked the Xgrid folks at Apple about this, and while
they stressed that Xgrid was developed for the scientific community and is
currently geared toward it in terms of usability and interface, they were
upbeat about the prospect of working with developers of these graphics
applications to create an interface for Xgrid. I suggest the folks at Alias
Software give them a call!

Now if they could only find a way to link five 40GB iPods together, I could
carry my entire music collection everywhere I go!

Do you have an opinion on this article? Think I missed something? Send your
questions, comments and curses to Y.Kossovsky@ieee.org.

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biweekly Macintoshnewsletter.


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'