[NTLUG:Discuss] DFWUUG meeting: Beowulf on Netfinity Servers

Tue Apr 4 12:04:23 CDT 2000

To: NTLUG members

The Dallas/Ft. Worth Unix Users Group's April meeting is this Thursday
evening at 7:00 PM, at the SGI facility at 6200 LBJ, just east at Preston,
to hear Jay Urbanski of IBM speak on the topic of Linux Supercomputers.

NTLUGers are specifically invited to attend!

Please see the full announcement below and remember the pizza and cokes are
FREE!

For more information on DFWUUG, please see: <http://www.dfwuug.org>.

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Title: The Linux Supercomputer

Speaker: Jay Urbanski

Netfinity Systems Engineer

IBM Advanced Technical Support

MCSE, PSE, RHCE, CSSA

Summary: Project Beowulf established the feasibility of using a network of
inexpensive Intel processors, coupled with the Linux operating system, to
create a powerful computer system. Last March IBM demonstrated such a system
at the LinuxWorld Expo in Atlanta. One of the speakers at that event was Jay
Urbanski!

Rather than trying to summarize what Jay will have to say to us on April
6th, please see the article below, reprinted from InfoWorld.

By-the-way, that was no mere demonstration as evidenced by the fact that the
current issue of ComputerWorld (March 27, page 16) announces the acquisition
of a Linux cluster by the U. of New Mexico which consists of 256 IBM
Netfinity servers.

Jay asked me how technical a presentation we wanted. I said "The more
technical the better". So pleased come prepared to hear what is happening at
the leading edge of Linux technology, not the leading edge of Linux
marketing.

Gary Lelvis,  Program Committee Chair, DFWUUG

----------------------------------------------------

Big Blue's Open-Source Computer Beats Cray by Ed Scannell of InfoWorld
Electric

Posted at 4:42 AM PT, Mar 13, 1999

Trying to burnish its engineering image as well as demonstrate the technical
possibilities of Linux, IBM showed an "open-source supercomputer'' at the
LinuxWorld Expo, held earlier this month, that was built around a cluster of
Pentium II Xeon chips.

Using a subset of the Beowulf clustering technology, 17 of IBM's Netfinity
servers containing 36 Pentium II chips and running an off-the-shelf copy of
Linux matched the scalability and performance of a Cray supercomputer. The
IBM system executed a computer graphics-rendering application called the
PovRay benchmark.

The PovRay benchmark is intended to serve as a guide for the relative
mathematical performance of a wide variety of chips, systems, and compilers.
It is a ray-tracing, image-rendering application with which a picture or
image can be inserted in a movie such as Toy Story or Antz and subsequently
be rendered displaying all of the shadows and the rays of light falling
relative to that picture or image.

"It is a big computational job. Ten years ago it would take a VAX 10 or 15
minutes to do. A Cray can do it in 3 seconds today,'' said Tom Figgatt,
IBM's e-business manager, in Somers, N.Y.

During the demonstration, IBM's Linux-based supercomputer matched the
current benchmark record of 3 seconds, which was set by the Cray
T3t-900-AC64. That mark had surpassed what is now the second-fastest time of
9 seconds.

The message IBM was trying to convey to users is that Linux has some innate
capabilities for linking together parallel computers that are not only
working in clusters but also working robustly using existing hardware and
software off the shelf or from the Web.

In addition to the 17 servers, IBM used a 100MB Ethernet network and hub to
connect the servers, and a piece of parallel computing software to ensure
the system's computations connected. As for the copy of Red Hat's Linux, IBM
purchased it at a local Barnes & Noble the day before the demonstration.

Although the demonstration of the application would be considered exotic by
most Fortune 1000 companies, IBM officials said they believe many commercial
accounts need this level of computing power for many of the company's
existing and upcoming electronic-commerce applications.

The advantage of the IBM-based system over the Cray, of course, is its more
attractive price performance, according to company officials. The
Netfinity/Linux benchmark was executed on approximately $150,000 worth of
equipment, while the cost of the Cray was $5.5 million, IBM's officials
said.

IBM also used the demonstration to flex the muscles of its X-architecture
features and capabilities, which now are included in all of IBM's servers up
to the mainframe-class machines. For example, during one of the rendering
demonstrations IBM took one of the servers offline. The rendering screen
missed several pixels during the fail-over process, but it filled them in by
the time the rendering was complete.

The benchmark results are available at www.haveland.com/povbench. Users must
click on the button labeled "list all parallel results.''

Stuart Yarus
BEA Systems, Inc. 			voice:	+1 972-943-5041
4965 Preston Park Blvd.		fax:	+1 972-943-5111
Suite 500				email:	syarus at beasys.com
Plano, Texas 75093-5150		WWW:	http://www.beasys.com/