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An Intel Atom 330 cluster?

Posted by Quinny Sun, 02 Nov 2008 12:10:52 GMT
It might not make it in to the Top 500 list, but it will be a nice exercise, and might even be useful: A cluster of Intel Atom 330s! I've done some looking around and I think I should come in at less than €150 per node. (Much less, if you look around... I've even left some room for materials to build a case.) For your ±150 euro you will get a mini-ITX board with an intel Atom 330 CPU (77 euro), 2 GB of DDR2 667 MHz memory, a PSU and an 8 GB CF card with CF-IDE convertor. For a little more money you could swap the normal PSU for a PicoPSU. You will of course also need a switch (180 euro for 16 Gbit ports, these days) and then some cabling. Even the ready to use systems based on Atoms are useable, though the cluster would then be a little more expensive. (but the individual components would be more easily sold after you're done playing with your cluster...) What could you use this for? From a Linux cluster (something like OpenMosix) to even xGrid on Leopard... It will probably be able to run OSx86. It would also be fun to experiment with high availability clusters.   I'm saving up for a new Mac first, then I'll look in to this again...

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  1. Daniel
    over 1 year later:
    I am currently looking to retrofit my university's 32 node P4 cluster with the Atom D510 because of its low energy/heat footprint. I will probably use supermicro boards since those will work with the form factor of the mini 14' cases and actually get good airflow instead of having the ram slots block the front fan, thus reducing the case to a $100 noise-maker. If the grant money comes through for upgrades then this will probably happen. I think I'll continue to use Rocks Cluster since after building/imaging systems from scratch I have a strong appreciation for how well prepared and delivered this distribution is, lots of power-tools too. If OpenMosix was still around(current) or its successor (LinuxPMI) was a little more develped then I would srongly consider it. Atoms would be perfect because I would have the capacity to run up lots of BLAST jobs and have enough resources to run EMBOSS and other stuff(MPI jobs, serial sims) along side it. Although I admit upgrading from a P4 is huge no matter what chip your using the Atom is a particularly good choice because we don't have a real server environment(cold room) and its a low power/heat chip.Dunno what you've ever used for batch systems but SGE is pretty swell although pbs/torque with a mai front-end isn't too bad either. If I had to describe the comparison, its the difference between an open source product, and an open source project. Either way a 32 node Atom cluster on gigabit(two daisy chained 16 ports i think...) with a fresh x64 os would be a beast.
  2. Quintin
    over 1 year later:
    Thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, I have not yet saved up enough money to buy some boards and start experimenting with them. I've been messing around a bit with virtual machines... I've done some messing around with SGE and Apple's XGRID.

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