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Supercomputing Businesses Networking iMac Apple Hardware

iMac Beowulf Cluster Comes to Life 56

Posted by timothy from the taste-the-rainbow dept.
AmigaAvenger writes "Finally a good use for all those old IMacs that many organizations have laying around collecting dust. We have set up a 5 node (4+1 controller) iMac beowulf cluster, which is appropriately named Skittles, and is running PPC Yellowdog Linux, with MPICH 1.2.6 cluster message passing software."
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iMac Beowulf Cluster Comes to Life More

iMac Beowulf Cluster Comes to Life

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  • Let me be the first to say... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of iMac Beowulf clusters!

  • too cool (Score:3, Funny)

    by ChristTrekker ( 91442 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:07PM (#12294361)

    I was half-way tempted to recreate beowoof [sonic.net] with my own stack of pizza boxes, but alas, I'm giving them all away. It will be nice to use the 2nd garage stall for a vehicle again, though.

    • Re:too cool (Score:3, Funny)

      by sootman ( 158191 )
      from the beowoof page:
      Q: Should I build a cluster of these 100 386s? [1999-05-13]

      A: If it's OK with you that it'll be slower than a single Celeron-333 machine, sure. Great way to learn.
      Updated for 2005:
      Q: Should I build a cluster with five $100 iMacs?

      A: If it's OK with you that it'll be slower than a single $500 Mini, sure.
      No sense mentioning the heat, current, or space differences. :-)
    • Are you really giving them away? Can I have one? Please? Pretty please?
  • This would be aweseom if we could get this to work on our pile of IIe boxes. The amazing thing is just how many still work after 15+ years.
    • 15-plus? C'mon, my mom has our old IIe that still works just fine (complete with Disk II and old-school Imagewriter) after 24 years.

      On a related note and totally unconnected to the subject note, is there anything out there that would help me take lots of high school papers written in Appleworks 1.0 to a more modern format?
      • AppleWorks 1.0?
        Don't you mean ClarisWorks 1.0?
        Or MacWrite 1.0?
        • Nope. I mean the original, one-floppy, 80-column Appleworks [apple2history.org]. Database + word processor goodness old-school style.

          I must have written about a hundred different papers on that thing.
      • Have you figured out a way to get them from the 140K floppies to a more accessible format? That's the biggest trouble AFAIK.

  • iMac Beowulf Cluster? Yum! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:09PM (#12294376) Journal
    They should have lined them up in a circle like in the old iMac posters!

  • Useless... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by afd8856 ( 700296 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:10PM (#12294377) Homepage
    I can understand the geek factor, even the teaching / experimenting factor. But, if anybody is in the same situation, please donate those macs to a charity. There are milions of kids in this world that have no access to IT, and could benefit from this kind of equipment. Even if its net value is below 100$, you can bet some kid could play or learn on it.

    • Re:Useless... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Beatbyte ( 163694 )
      I was thinking the same thing... in addition to, why is this on Slashdot?

      I'll just have to remember the next time I make something that gives me the King of Nerds feeling, I should submit the project details to Slashdot.

    • Re:Useless... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 0racle ( 667029 )
      Why would I give my systems away when I can find amusement with them?

    • Re:Useless... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Remember that this was at a university, with old university computers. If they were bought with certain government grant money, they might not be able to give them away for a certain number of years, or even give them away at all...

    • Re:Useless... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Digital Pizza ( 855175 )
      Perhaps they will; I doubt that this cluster is powerful enough, or long-term-interesting enough to keep around for any real length of time. I mean, they used a mere 10-megabit hub, for cryin' out loud, on machines that have 100-megabit interfaces. It's obvious that they're just toying around with this. Afterward, a charitible contribution would be a nice little tax deduction.
    • Speaking as a geek-parent, I don't think I would want my kids working on machines that are subpar, or old. At home, at least, I want to keep my kids up to date with technology. I don't want their experience with technology being on old machines likely to crap out; that's how a fear of this stuff starts because this type of stuff breaks(e.g., "If I touch it it will blow up"). If anything, our schools and our children deserve faster boxes...

      --pete

      • Re:Useless... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Randy Wang ( 700248 )
        I don't believe that's necessarily true. I'm sixteen years old, and when I was four we bought our first computer: a blazing-fast 16Mhz 68k Macintosh Classic II, with a massive 2Mb RAM and an 80Mb hard disk. Remember, I was four at the time.

        Now, by the time I was actually capable of using it independently, at around age eight, it was already obsolete (damn you, 604e!). By the time it died, we had owned it for no less than nine years, running pretty well constantly whenever we were home, passively cooled in
  • In all seriousness, doesn't it seem kinda bad to have a bunch of CRT-integrated imacs in a cluster? That'd take up a lot of space.

    • Apple sells the Xserve if that's what you want to do.

    • Re:Isn't this somewhat unneccessary? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Digital Pizza ( 855175 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @07:25PM (#12297735)
      This is obviously just a short-term toy project - I doubt they're serious about doing any real work on this. I mean, a 10-megabit hub?

      The power draw would be a problem too. I used to have an iMac DV, and even with the screen in "energy-save" mode, there was still a bit of power being drawn by the tube and accompanying electronics.

      The best old Mac for clustering would be, IMHO, the Gigabit Ethernet G4. They must be fairly cheap by now, have Gigabit Ethernet (duh), take two gigabytes of RAM, and are easily processor-upgradeable if desired (G4 upgrades are getting cheap).

      • there was still a bit of power being drawn by the tube and accompanying electronics.

        I was given an iMac with what turned out to be a busted flyback transformer [macopz.com]. I was able to get some use out of it by removing the bottom panel and connecting an external PC monitor via a Mac-video-to-vga converter. I'm pretty sure you can also remove the power to the analog board, which would address your concern.

        I like the iMac case - it's like a 3-D puzzle trying to get it apart and back together.

        • I'll bet you recieved a tray-loading iMac; with those models you can do as you describe because the power supply, motherboard, and analog (video) board are all discrete components, and there is an internal VGA connector.

          My iMac was the slot-loading type, and in that model the power supply is part of the analog board, and is so integrated with the video circuitry that power is achieved only if the CRT is working. The only way to run a slot-loading iMac without the CRT is to remove the motherboard and ada

  • I still have ask... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by anactofgod ( 68756 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:16PM (#12294438)
    ..."Why?"

    Not why do it. But why post about it.

    This may be interesting if the cluster was created to serve some purpose. but if the purpose was merely for the admins to learn about how to set up a Beowulf cluster, well, that exercise is probably performed at least once a day somewhere in the world.

    Hardly seems to warrant a post on one's own Web site, let alone a link to Slashdot, IMHO.

    "Skittles"...Cute name, though. Wait til Mars, Inc. hears about it...

    • Re:I still have ask... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:25PM (#12294526) Homepage Journal
      it's answered in TFA.

      *******They said it couldn't be done. Well, actually the said, "Why would you want to?" The answer is, of course, "Because they're there, and it's the geek thing to do."*******

      good enough reason for me. besides, serves as good practice.

      • Re:I still have ask... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by anactofgod ( 68756 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:54PM (#12294758)
        I understand that, because I actually did RTFA. My point is so what? Fine, do it as an exercise in something new-to-you. Do it as for practice. But understand that there is absolutely nothing news worthy, or even noteworthy, about what was done.

        Now, if they were going to post information about tasks that they were seeking to accomplish with said cluster, that would interesting. More interesting would have been metrics associated in the performance of said tasks.

        But, basically this post is about some guys who installed software on some computers, configured in a manner similar to what has been done thousands of times in the past by others, and got it to run.

        *YAWN*

        I'm sure it was fun. I'm sure it was interesting, maybe even educational, to the guys doing the work. But hardly worth sharing with others, IMHO. I even call into question how high a "geek" factor this activity has. At the end of the day, they installed software for the sake of installing software.

        If you don't agree, then perhaps I should post articles on how a buddy downloaded and installed Cloudscape on a Sawtooth G4. It was exciting (to him)! It was cool (to him)! Sure, many others have done the same thing, and sure, he's not actually using it for anything, But hey! It was geeky, especially since he did it on a Fr night instead of doing something socially interactive.

        • Re:I still have ask... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by forkazoo ( 138186 ) <wrosecrans@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @08:15PM (#12298116) Homepage
          Why is this poor bastard being modded troll? He is right. This isn't the slightest bit newsworthy. It's a five node cluster, FFS! I have done 3D rendering using five different architectures simultaneously, and it certainly wasn't noteworthy. A friend used a whole computer lab of Sun boxes as an impromptu cluster. I used a lab of PC's as a renderfarm in school.

          If this was a cluster for some really cool task, like rendering for a CAVE used in brain implant research in a 3rd world country, or something, it just might almost be newsworthy. This isn't. Not even a little.

    • Haven't been on the Internet much, have you?

      Most of the time I surf the net I am shaking my head saying "What the fuck..."

  • Sorry but I have a better use (Score:4, Funny)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:18PM (#12294452) Journal
    I still prefer my multipurpose footstool / doorstop idea.

  • A few typos in the article... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:19PM (#12294458)
    In the place where it says "Why would you want to?" The answer is, of course, "Because they're there, and it's the geek thing to do."

    I think they meant to type:

    "Why would you want to?" The answer is, of course, "It's not like sex is taking up all my time or anything..."

  • Did anyone else... (Score:3, Funny)

    by BlueCodeWarrior ( 638065 ) <steevk@gmail.com> on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:43PM (#12294661) Homepage
    ...originally parse this as 'Mac Mini Beowulf Cluster Comes to Life'?

  • Finally. (Score:5, Funny)

    by InfallibleLies ( 654694 ) on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:48PM (#12294707)
    After years of inane "imagine a beowulf cluster of those!"es, I can finally see one. My life is now complete, thanks to Slashdot.

  • X-Grid (Score:5, Informative)

    by gellenburg ( 61212 ) <george@ellenburg.org> on Wednesday April 20, 2005 @02:53PM (#12294752) Homepage Journal
    With X-Grid coming standar with 10.4 doing this in the future will be child's play.

  • again? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hasn't it been pretty much shown that you can cluster pretty much anything given a network connecting the elements together? What seems to be lost is that the point of clustering is to achieve a certain amount of performance for a lower cost using multiple cheap elements than the alternative higher prices single high performance system. The whole point is lost when the amount of time and effort that goes into the project costs more than the equivalent single out-of-the-box system. In this case, you're se

  • ...to my first and biggest iMac Starcraft cluster. It used my iMac, the host's girlfriend's iMac, and 3 iMacs the Apple shop guy had borrowed from work (plus some kind of laptop and an early model TiBook). This was the first time everything just worked (mainly because previously I thought I had read in LAN Games for Dummies that 127.0.0.x was a good set of numbers to use).

    It was an excellent and multicoloured night. The host's girlfriend remarked genially about "boy games" and gave us stuff to eat.

  • yeah but can you make a Beo-- oh, wait a sec
  • Least Usefull cluster EVER.

    Apple Seed project is the only way to go.
  • 1)
    Q: Who was that beowulf cluster I saw you with last night?
    A: That was no beowulf cluster. That was my wi-fi.

    2)
    Man walks into a bar, orders a beowulf cluster. Bartender says, "Straight up or on racks?" Man says, "On the racks, please."

    3)
    Imagine a thread filled with the same one-liner beowulf cluster jokes. Now imagine a beowulf cluster of these things!

    4)
    I've just gone through a messy divorce. My wife caught me in the middle of an orgy. In my own defense, I was only screwing one iMac. Bu

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