[Mac_crypto] Clusterware

[Dan O'Donnell]

I was pleasantly surprised to see the Xgrid software at the Apple booth less
than an hour after watching the keynote speech which mentioned cluster
computing.

I've had occasion to look into setting up a cluster with Wolfram's
gridMathematica.

The application handles all the grid/cluster housekeeping itself.

Communication is with the operating system's TCP/IP. GridMathematica is not
yet 64-bit, but they say it will be within a month. At that time a dual
processor G5 will count as two nodes, and gM will address 4 GB of RAM per
processor - allowing the full 8 GB capacity to be addressed. It sells in a
minimum-size sales package of 8-node units.

The 64 bit Linux version is available now to run on Opteron (or presumably
some Intel 64 bit hardware); there will be no 64 bit Windows version of gM.

> From: mac_crypto-request@vmeng.com
> Reply-To: mac_crypto@vmeng.com
> Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 12:00:04 -0800
> To: mac_crypto@vmeng.com
> Subject: mac_crypto digest, Vol 1 #205 - 1 msg
> 
> Xgrid -- A first look at Apple's new cluster software
> 
> 
> By Yuval Kossovsky
> JANUARY 12, 2004
> 
<snip>
> 
> 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.
>
<snip>