ok I'm kinda new th the NeXT world, but I've been thinking I can get ahold of these fine pieces of machinery for a relitivly low cost and bieng slabs they do seem to be easily stackable. Also a built in NIC, intreguing I know. Now what are your thoughts on creating a beowulf cluster, like how many nodes should I have, should I try running the stock OS or install LINUX? any suggestions?
Basically you are talking about clustering a bunch of 68040 based systems running at either 25 or 33 MHz... Two things come to mind:[list=1]
- You can get five times as many Macs running at the same speed as NeXTstations, and the memory would be less expensive too.
- If you are going to cluster them, you are wasting the best part of these systems... the user interface and application environment.[/list:o]Generally speaking, beowulf clusters are made of systems that are no longer of any value for other tasks. Considering the small number of these systems that were ever made, having any amount wasted in such a setup seems like a crime.
Same with running Linux or some other OS on them. If you need Linux or BSD on a 68k system, use an old Mac. There are tons of them and the original OS wasn't much to write home about. But NeXT systems should be doing what they were designed to do... running NEXTSTEP and NeXT applications.
As for building a 68k beowulf cluster, I'd use Quadra 700s (which are very nice systems, easy to work on and find replacement parts for), but if you wanted something closer to the NeXTstation's form then you may want a Quadra 610 (which is as fast as the 700, but things like power supplies are harder to come by).
Usually clusters are set on doing math intensive tasks, so I, personally, would consider building it out of a ton of Power Macintosh 6100 (same case as the Quadra 610). The PowerPC 601 was highly regarded for it's floating point abilities. The next processor in it's family, the PowerPC 604, was still being used by a cluster on the top 500 super computers list last time I checked. And 6100s are still way less expensive than NeXTstations.
ok facts well noted, how about using it as a frontend for a cluster then? running some old macs back there and finding a way to use NeXTstep as the interface for it, running a unix based OS it shouldn't be too dificult
I had friends that did that all the time back when I was at the Geometry Center. We had about 40 NeXTstations, 10 SGIs and 6 Suns, and at night one of my firends would take over all the systems from his workstation to run a math app he had written.
As I was doing pure mathematics at the time and didn't have any real need for computers, having them all tied up while I was there was never a problem.
But yeah, using an app on a NeXTstation as a front end for something like that would work out great. One of the reason NeXTstations were so sought after in the mathematics community was because you could write really nice GUI front end apps for things like Mathematica... even if the kernel was residing on other systems.
Well, if you have multiple NeXT systems networked, can't you run Zilla? I have yet to discover an interesting use for this app (as I have no math-intensive activities planned for the next couple decades). But communal computing seemed to be on the mind of the NeXT designers... but is it worth setting up? How do you set it up? And what can you do / run on it? Anyone out there have any ideas?
Considering the creator of Objective-C was a Computational Biologist, the one kind of distributed application that comes to mind is Biotechnology.
Not just folding@home which uses GROMACS or Tinker, but any other Molecular Dynamics application depending on heavy math and FORTRAN and C++ or ObjC, MOPAC and such.
I also remember a program called MIDAS Plus from the Computer Graphics Laboratory of University of California San Francisco, was ported to the NeXT for NeXTSTEP, but there was no support for the Dimension board. This is a molecular visualisation and modelling suite now in it's current incarnation as a C++/Python suite called Chimera. This suite has a function called Collaboratory, which is a very fine way for connecting systems running MIDAS Plus or Chimera across the internet, a world wide distributed application long before SETI@Home or Folding@home.
The home page of MIDAS Plus is here (
http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/Outreach/midasplus/)
An introduction to using MIDAS Plus is here (
http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/home/glasfeld/tutorial/intro.html)
The home page of Chimera is here (
http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/)
NB if anyone has MIDAS Plus for NeXTSTEP, please let me know and please please don't Ebay it. It might take me ages to save up the money but I've wanted to find this for a long time :)
In a slightly releated way... is there any real reason to build a cluster at home? I mean beyond the geek-glory of it... it's something that's always interested me but not really sure to what use. I'm actually getting the point that I could pickup a bunch of G4's or something, but not really sure what I could do with it.
I'll prob never build one for the lack of a legit project definition, but it would be fun to try.
other than the "OMG, you have a cluster!?" factor and/or if you do lots of 3D stuff, distributed computing projects... not much use :P
Yeah, pretty much what I assumed. But man, would be pretty cool... although I think my wife would shoot me for being able to use my power meter as a buzz saw.
Zilla works with Renderman. (
http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/archive/macosx-talk/2000-September/028352.html)
You can have a dozen 25MHz machines cranking out a few frames of less-than 'Luxo Jr.' quality animation per day, if that sounds good to you! :)
Nobody does/has done it, to my knowledge, but that doesn't mean it's not possible..
Check craigslist - you may luck upon a stack of old dual-slot Dell PIII 1U servers like I did.
You can run OS 4.2 on them, with Zilla as well, and maybe boost it up to 'Tin Toy' quality 8)
Or, you can pursue the Linux route:my personal clustering project (
http://cluster.juddy.org)..