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RE: re[2]: Interesting
This is an excerpt from a SUN press release at
http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2002-04/sunflash.20020422.1.html
*************
About the Grid Engine Project
The Grid Engine open source project is the home for the growing Grid Engine
user and developer community. Grid Engine software is a leading distributed
resource management tool for cluster and campus grids. Managing and
submitting jobs to available compute resources in an individual grid, Grid
Engine technology maximizes CPU utilization, increases productivity and
return on investment. Sponsored by Sun Microsystems, the project is at
www.gridengine.sunsource.net. Sun Grid Engine is also available as a free
download at www.sun.com/grid. Users of Grid Engine technology include Ford,
Caprion Pharmaceuticals, BP, Cognigen Corporation, Motorola, Sony
Semiconductor and Devices Europe, Aachen University of Technology,
University of Durham and University of Edinburgh.
*************
As I already stated, the GRID concept is about resource management. It's
more like Mosix than SETI@Home. The impetus for this technology started in
the academic research environment, where scientists have multiple types of
systems, i.e. workstations, clusters, supercomputers, massive SMP servers,
etc. At any given time, CPU cycles on many systems were being wasted.
Researches wanted a way to make use of all cycles on all their machines for
simulation apps, and thus the concept of "Grid computing" was formed.
Take a bunch of machines, any kind (*nix), add some low level resource
management/scheduling software (grid software), and now magically you can
have remote access to infinite CPU resources--you will have access to
literally as many processors as you have *assigned* into your grid,
potentially in the thousands. Applications for the GRID will necessarily
need to be fairly lean on interprocess communication, thus you're not going
to run LINPACK across processors/machines in a GRID. Applications will need
to be tailored to have little IPC, and process most data locally, due to
network bandwidth/latency constraints. If you already have apps like this,
GRID computing will be of benifit.
Lastly, keep in mind that this is still in the very early stages of
development. GRID software is a low level enabling technology. GRID is all
about horizontal scalability of CPU bound applications. IBM is in the
infancy stages of creating GRID type software to be used for commercial data
processing of E-Commerce types of transactions. It's a long way from
commercialization.
SUN's GRID software, AFAIK, is geared to the scientific/simulation app
space. Obviously, you can find out far more about the GRID at the links
provided above.
Hope this is the type of info you were looking for.
StanTheMan
TheHardwareFreak
http://www.hardwarefreak.com
stan@hardwarefreak.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Greg Freemyer [mailto:freemyer@NorcrossGroup.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2002 12:06 PM
> To: Stan Hoeppner; Linux Clusters Mailinig List
> Cc: Linux HA - users mailing lins
> Subject: re[2]: Interesting
>
>
>
> Thanks for the info,
>
> So it is more like the SETI project, where they supply a
> screen-saver that runs calculations in the background and
> forwards the results to a main system somewhere.
>
> Note quite what I thought it was, but I still find it interesting.
>
> >> AFAIK, Sun's Grid Engine project (as well as IBM's grid
> initiative) is not
> >> really clustering per say, but more of a distributed
> computing model.
>
> >> Think of the Mosix concept "loosely" but on a
> potentially EXTREMELY large
> >> scale. The main push of "The Grid" is to allow
> "seamless" access to CPU
> >> cycles, regardless of location. This seems more like a
> distributed model,
> >> vs. clustered, as the the latencies across the internet
> preclude HP
> >> clustering. Grid software is gear toward locating hosts
> with free cycles
> >> to
> >> launch processes on, rather than say running an MPI app
> on 64,000 machines
> >> across the net.
>
> >> StanTheMan
> >> TheHardwareFreak
> >> http://www.hardwarefreak.com
> >> stan@hardwarefreak.com
>
>
>
> >> > -----Original Message-----
> >> > From: Greg Freemyer [mailto:freemyer@NorcrossGroup.com]
> >> > Sent: Monday, April 29, 2002 5:36 PM
> >> > To: Linux Clusters Mailinig List
> >> > Cc: Linux HA - users mailing lins
> >> > Subject: Interesting
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > I just saw that Suse 8.0 Professional includes Sun's
> Grid Engine.
> >> >
> >> >
http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2002-04/sunflash.20020422.1.html
>> >
>> > I don't know anything about it, but it is nice to see some
>> > cluster solutions going into a mainstream distribution.
>> >
>> > There are probably others, but none that I know of.
>> >
>> > BTW: I assume it is a HP clustering solution, not an HA one.
>> >
>> > Greg Freemyer
>> > Internet Engineer
>> > Deployment and Integration Specialist
>> > Compaq ASE - Tru64
>> > Compaq Master ASE - SAN Architect
>> > The Norcross Group
>> > www.NorcrossGroup.com
>> >
>> >
>> > -
>> > Linux-cluster: generic cluster infrastructure for Linux
>> > Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-cluster/
>> >
>> -
>> Linux-cluster: generic cluster infrastructure for Linux
>> Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-cluster/
Greg Freemyer
Internet Engineer
Deployment and Integration Specialist
Compaq ASE - Tru64
Compaq Master ASE - SAN Architect
The Norcross Group
www.NorcrossGroup.com
-
Linux-cluster: generic cluster infrastructure for Linux
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-cluster/