What really made small clusters at home less attractive, there is another reason i should add :
That's the rise of cheap multi socket machines. A 2 socket machine is not so expensive anymore nowadays. So if you want faster than 1 socket, you buy a 2 socket machine. If you want faster than that , 4 sockets is there. That choice wasn't there before end 90s easily available. And in the 21th century it has become cheap. Another delaying factor is the rise of so many cores per node. AMD and intel sell cpu's for their 4 socket line that has up to double the amount of nodes than you can have in a single socket box. So it's equivalent nearly to 8 nodes, be it low clocked. For that reason clusters tend to get more effective at a dozen nodes or more, assuming cheap single socket nodes. _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, [email protected] sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
