Re: Distributive Computing

From: harrold@sage.che.pitt.edu Subject: Re: Distributive Computing Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 17:57:59 -0400 (EDT) Sometime in October Nick Holford assaulted keyboard and produced... |Even cheaper options include: |1. Use VNC to control your number crunching slave computers. |Virtual Network Computing works with almost any operating system to allow remote control. It requires you have a TCP/IP connection but you dont need a keyboard or monitor for the slave computers once it is running. The software is free and you can control as many computers as you want from anywhere with an IP connection. The client part of the software (the 'viewer') fits on a single floppy disk so you can travel light! | http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ | |2. Get PCs with dual CPU motherboard and 2 CPUs. |Generally cheaper to buy a dual CPU machine with all other components in common than to buy 2 machines. You will need to use Windows 2000 but Win2K is very stable. The multiprocessing works nicely including being able to set NONMEM jobs at a low priority so that you can respond to nmusers without any interference yet have negligble impact on the NONMEM run times. even cheaper: use linux and save $80 per computer for the operating system, and loose the overhead of a gui. plus the fortran compiler is also free. use ssh to connect to the computers with x forwarding turned on to display grapical stuff to your local computer when you want that kind of thing. this woud requrire some network cards, a switch, and some network cable, but that would be balanced out because you wouldnt need monitors or videocards. -- john