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[Arch~Angel]

Hello Everyone,

Current Setup:
(IMG:http://www.clusterx.org/images/ClusterX-1.JPG)
*** Forgive the construction as we are working on the basment ***

We have built a 12 node XBox Cluster running Xebian.  We have 11 nodes working with 1 node as a development node.  We wanted to show high schools and colleges who don't want to give up money to allow their students to learn parallel programming that there is another method to buying these supercomputers.  We had requested money to build a clsuter for our group with the support of our university and they said it was not able to be fit into the budget, so we decided to prove to them it could be done at a fairly low cost.  

Here is our web site : ClusterX
(still under construction as we have been working on the cluster itself first)

Take a look and send us your suggestions to additoional things to do with our new found toy.  We are thinking of offering it to local high schools who may want to learn this type of programming, but we want fun things to do as well.  

What does everyone think of : Distributed.net

What about This : SETI

Email us some suggestions to : [email protected]

Take a look around the site and stop back often as we will start to work on the site as well as continuing the ClusterX project.

Take Care,

Arch~Angel

[chimpanzee]

QUOTE (Arch~Angel @ Aug 1 2004, 02:25 PM)

Hello Everyone, Current Setup: *** Forgive the construction as we are working on the basment *** We have built a 12 node XBox Cluster running Xebian.  We have 11 nodes working with 1 node as a development node.  We wanted to show high schools and colleges who don't want to give up money to allow their students to learn parallel programming that there is another method to buying these supercomputers.  We had requested money to build a clsuter for our group with the support of our university and they said it was not able to be fit into the budget, so we decided to prove to them it could be done at a fairly low cost.   Here is our web site : ClusterX (still under construction as we have been working on the cluster itself first) Take a look and send us your suggestions to additoional things to do with our new found toy.  We are thinking of offering it to local high schools who may want to learn this type of programming, but we want fun things to do as well.   What does everyone think of : Distributed.net What about This : SETI Email us some suggestions to : [email protected] Take a look around the site and stop back often as we will start to work on the site as well as continuing the ClusterX project. Take Care, Arch~Angel

Yup, largest I am aware of. Do you use Mosix or OpenMosix and what kernel ? I once played around with a 2 node system but can't find good use of it.

[bucko]

I've got to do this with my 16 port hub

[Arch~Angel]

Hello Everyone,

chimpanzee:

QUOTE

Yup, largest I am aware of. Do you use Mosix or OpenMosix and what kernel ? I once played around with a 2 node system but can't find good use of it.

We are using OpenMosix.  I have added a FAQ's  page to our web site and hopfully we will be able to answer the question sent to use in a quick manor.  If you don't see an answer there please feel free to contact us via email :

[email protected]

I will try and get them answered as quickly as possible...

Take Care,

Arch~Angel

[hippo]

what kinda frame rate are you getting in Halo?  

[No_Remorse_666]

Site looks good , and well anything with 12 xboxes in it looks cool as hell.
Keep us posted on how this turns out, and any cool things you can do with it.

[Potato Bob]

u did what was me dream  
anyone up for the 20 xbox cluster?

[Arch~Angel]

Hey Everyone,

Potato Bob:

QUOTE

u did what was me dream biggrin.gif anyone up for the 20 xbox cluster?

As a matter of fact we are looking to go at least to 35, we want to show that a cluster of Xboxs can have the number crunching power of the 70 node Playstatioon 2 cluster.

http://arrakis.ncsa.uiuc.edu/ps2/cluster.php

Then we are thinking about going futher just for fun, no really we are thinking of opening our cluster to high schools and colleges that want to use it to learn parallel programming or something like a maya rendering farm for students to us.  All this is future stuff nothing is set in stone.

Worse come to worse we can always build a super huge cluster and search for little green men with SETI.  

QUOTE

If you build it they will come...

So any suggestions to what do use it for we are open, as long as they are benifical to people and not harmful.


Take Care Everyone,

Arch~Angel

[chimpanzee]

Have you thought about Xbox cluster party ? Just package it into one single rootfs and your schoolmate can bring in there xbox. All you need is a game save and load it on them and viola, yet another node coming up.

The beauty of Xbox is, it is so easy to carry comparing with a PC and that it is a uniformed platform(except the display which is easy to solve) meaning you only need one kernel/rootfs to boot on any xbox and they will work.

With the right network infrastructure, you can have as many nodes(until there is no gain in performance) as you want. Need some more power, ask the buddies to lend you a few for a few days and they can take it back when needed :-)

Would be a good excercise to practice cluster management and monitoring tools too.

And they would have one more reason to buy one, "oh, it is for studying in school, not game playing".

This post has been edited by chimpanzee: Aug 2 2004, 04:21 AM

[Arch~Angel]

Hey Chimpanzee,

QUOTE

... cluster management and monitoring tools ...

This is taken care of already with RADMIND.  It syncs, loadblanaces, and controlls the entire clusters as we add  nodes we type a few commands and bam a fully operational node.  This being done after Xebina is install of course...

Take Care,

Arch~Angel

[leftyfb]

Very cool.

Distributed computing is always fun, especially when done on hardware not meant for typical pc operations. It'd be great if we could make this cluster live and have others able to create and join nodes over the internet. Think 1200 node xbox cluster

[Majinbuu]

I noticed in the picture of the back of your cluster that the power cords are bundled for a few feet with the ethernet cable. This situation usually causes some packet loss because of the 60Hz RF thrown off. Ethernet cable bundled over a long run with a power cable can make a connection unusable. I dont know how much a few feet of 6 cables (12 since they double back) bundled together with the ethernet cables would affect the network performance, but what if you could get a few extra clock cycles by moving them apart. Your goal IS to whoop playstation's ass right? Awesome setup anyways, looks evil.

Buu

[Arch~Angel]

Hello Everyone,

Majinbuu Wrote:

QUOTE

I noticed in the picture of the back of your cluster that the power cords are bundled for a few feet with the ethernet cable. This situation usually causes some packet loss because of the 60Hz RF thrown off. Ethernet cable bundled over a long run with a power cable can make a connection unusable. I dont know how much a few feet of 6 cables (12 since they double back) bundled together with the ethernet cables would affect the network performance, but what if you could get a few extra clock cycles by moving them apart. Your goal IS to whoop playstation's ass right? Awesome setup anyways, looks evil. Buu

Come to think of that this may just cause a problem, as I bundled the first six on the right side of the shelf and did it for that reason.  I think I may redo these wires and keep them away from the Cat5 cables as much as possible, that is a very good, solid point.

Maybe I can run the Cat5 in piping to break the RF signal like we do in buildings, that might work as well.... o well back to the design board

THANKS! --> Majinbuu  

Also if you have ideas for good benchamrking software let us know we were going to use LinPack but it is a linear benchmark and does notcompletely, truly test the cluster.  So we are still in the dev stages reading more articles on different tools to us, but hey worse comes to worse we can still  go for this: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/  

Take Care,

Arch~Angel

[Krusty2k]

My 2c (not trying to start a flame war)

The biggest issue impairing this from going from a pet project to a real acceptable project (in terms of getting grant money and acceptance in a faculty type setting) would be the inherent lack of approval by MS.

Sony endorses the use of a PS2 beyond its game machine design - by releasing the Linux addon kit. Essentially the only way the XBOX achieved linux status is because of the leaked SDK's floating around and the help of one curious bunnie.

Dont get me wrong, Im all for this kind of thing. I just dont think M$ will take kindly to an academic organization funding the use of their product in this manner.

Good luck with the project

[chimpanzee]

QUOTE (Krusty2k @ Aug 3 2004, 06:18 PM)

Sony endorses the use of a PS2 beyond its game machine design - by releasing the Linux addon kit. Essentially the only way the XBOX achieved linux status is because of the leaked SDK's floating around and the help of one curious bunnie.

um, I did follow the history of the xbox-linux development but I thought they just reverse engineer it with the help of modchip ?