Official AMD Users team SuperComputer

[Jeff]

Most of you know that I came up with the idea of making aa Athlon64 box when it first came out. That really didn't work out, but, Bionic_Redneck, Vaughan, and I have talked about making a "supercomputer" that consists of many several nodes.

[jlangner]

Not sure what you mean completely. Please explain more. Thanks.

[em99010pepe]

Several computers using the same login?

[Jeff]

Sorry, accidentally submitted early.

What we plan on doing is hooking up several computers together, using the same login information.
http://ws9.jobnegotiator.com/images/stomp/stomp_monster2l.jpg

These will be used only for DCing. I will let BR post more information, as he is in charge of this idea.[/img]

[vaughan]

I like the open style case. Puts those expensive acrylic ones to shame and you could put inside a fridge so it didn't get too hot! :)

[Bionic_Redneck]

that would be nice if you could use a fridge but would never be powerful enough for that amount of heat anyway my idea is to have members donate parts to get several node running preferable diskless and headless to save on power consumption but first we need to decide what project that we want to put it on because not all projects run on a diskless workstation. the one that I know that work is seti, fah, gah, and dnet. the ones that don't is any project that uses java. I will provide the server for the nodes but what we need for each node is motherboard, cpu, heatsink, ram, nic, floppy, psu. I have some of these things already but we have room for 14 nodes on the rack so we need also need a 16 port router as far as cpus lets stick with only socket A

[Anonymous]

So is this going ahead now or are we still going for an athlon64?

[Bionic_Redneck]

We are going with this instead. Just seems to make more sense to have several XP's over one athlon 64 plus should be way more powerful. Right now I am in the middle of remaking the rack to be more compact with the plans of using matx board. thing are going a little slow because I haven't been getting home after work until 7 or 8 each night.

[Bionic_Redneck]

finially finshed the rack and the first workstation is going to be:

biostar M7vig pro-d motherboard
128mb ddr 2100
XP 1800+
thermalright slk-7
230w psu

waiting on heatsink to get here but in the mean time started mounting the hardware I do have so by the end of the week we should have the first one up

We still need to choice a project. I'm in favor of one of the dnet projects because it can be ran from ram and the work station would only need to access hd at first boot saving alot of wear and tear on it.

[Bionic_Redneck]

just ordered a 8 port swtch, 2 psu's, xp 1800+, and 3 motherboards :hathat6:

[Daphyl]

I'm new to the group, so if anyone thinks I'm outta' line, please feel free to say so. Anyway, I'm willing to support whatever the group wants; but... I kinda have a problem with some of these companies that want to use my PC and electicity to develop a product that is going to make someone else rich. So I prefer a non-profit type organization and not a private company. Just my thoughts...

David

[Bionic_Redneck]

well alot of people feel that way and some seem like it for profit but in reality they not. Take ecc2 for example if it was crack 5,000 goes to the project and 2,500 goes to the person and another 2,500 goes to the team. I'm pretty sure that they have used it that much just in bandwidth already then there is TSC. I wouldn't say for sure if that for profit but I do know that the Rothberg's have donated over 5 million dollar to the project. I guess it comes down to what your goals are. lets face it with SETI you don't really think you will find aliens out there but for argument sake there was aliens. for radio signal to reach far enough and then come back would take decades if not centuries but what I don't understand if they did find aliens what would be the outcome be..because we don't have any ship that would go that far and if they were advanced enough to have one that would who is to say they would be friendly. Now back to the subject at hand TSC is one project I say is worthy of doing even if there was a profit to be had. The Disease targets young children and attacks their internal organs. I guess each individual has to ask thierself what is more important to them "non-profit" or possible curing some disease. Me I don't care that much if it's a "for profit" it's all about the goal but some projects go overboard like UD or grid.org was using people to do website performace test in the background.

[numibesi]

I have the same opinion than Bionic_Redneck i from time to time try new projects because i get bored seeing the same things on screen all the time sometimes :) , but "drug finder" projects is deffenitly my target projects, or projects that could in some way benefit those. Truly that seti, libbary, "for fun" project i do not care at all if people that participate on them just for the competition could be "eyes opened" for the benefit of helping on finding a possible "hit" to cure for so major diseases we have nowadays we could defenitly progress a lot faster that we do today, but everyone has their own oppinions, and in some point that is the "problem"...

[shnal]

Anything to report progress-wise? I would really like to see the end result of this project.

I was wondering would we be able to add more nodes at later dates to make the computer even more powerful?

[Bionic_Redneck]

I had got server running k12ltsp linux yesterday. It took a while to figure out how to get directories exported to the workstations and writable but did try it with eon and it was working but didn't see any increase in stats so I started worrying if the clients were using the client.config and if they weren't we wern't getting credit for the work, so now I put them on FAH and using kdfold to monitor all clients and set it to upload the status to http://www.amdusers.com/diskless_farm/

I have another node toput together sometime today and do have a choice of a tbird 1.4 or one of the 2 xp1800+'s Daphyl sent in and we do have room for another 6 diskless client after that. Oh btw I left them under my username so wouldn't start with zero points but if anyone object to that I can easily make a new username for them. I also forgot to mention that I got a 8 port switch so I need to upgrade that evenually but it was only $19

[Bionic_Redneck]

one more thing Shanl we could have up to 253 diskless workstation without having to have another server but that would require quite a few more racks. I wouldn't mind building another rack or two should be only a little effort involved since I have one done already to use as a blueprint and 20 athlon sound much better than 10 :laughing6:

I'm going to keep my eye out for some floppy drives. I'm down to the last one or might start going to some yard sales and get some computer to scrap.

[Jeff]

What parts do we need?

List them out like so:

2x Floppy
1x PSU
etc

Also, I think we should have a new name for the nodes, that way we can track the progress of them easier. That is my 2 cents anyway.

[Bionic_Redneck]

right now we need

ws005:

motherboard
floppy
psu
heatsink


ws006:

motherboard
floppy
psu
ram- 128mb is plenty
heatsink

[Anonymous]

What project are the nodes running right now?

[Bionic_Redneck]

they were running lifemapper but the linux client appear to be too slow to bother running so now they are running eon. I did have an issue with trying to restore from backup yesterday and totally screwed hdd partition and took me all day to get straightened out and got everything back online this morning at 6am.

[Brucifer]

BUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMPPPPPPPPP :)

While this is a real old thread, is there still any interest in this effort? There has got to be a lot of socket A athlon XP's laying around. And stuff like XP1800+ cpu's still do a good job sieving or prp for stuff like the PSP project.

Myself, I have basically run out of room to put computers and have to stoop to the level begging extended family to allow me to hide a couple systems at their places. My neighbor also works for a computer salvage place so I do have some access to some things like floppy's, cdrom drives, power supplies, etc. What they don't get in is many athlon/P4 systems, and those they sell.

A problem I see though is that this team is scattered all over the planet. And trying to ship things to another country can get pricey in a hurry due to customs fees, etc. Thoughts, comments??????? How many members reside in the US?

Bruce

[mitro]

I've got a barely used Duron (1800+ I think) and a 256MB stick of generic PC2100 I'd gladly donate. I also have a stock heatsink for socket A (the larger one from later models) and I have many fans I need to get rid of in various sizes.

[BlackAdder]

I have a IBM 16 port ethernet hub I no longer use that I can donate...let the team know what is needed and where it is going to be set up and I'll see what else I have laying around. :D

[Brucifer]

I've got a couple systems I can donate to it. What we need is someone that has space/facilities to set this up. Unfortunately since it appears from the posts a year or two ago here that the person that was supposed to do it evidently took a powder.... at least so the posts say. And if so, then that has undoubtedly turned some people sour on the idea. However another big team set up their "Crunchenstein" project. They limited the number of hosts that could be sent to any one place, and had a board of directors and all that. And the US-Distributed Team also set up a project for getting some mini-farms out to a few hosts. The people that contributed the money/parts were the ones that formed to committee for that farm to determine the projects it crunched on and all.

At the other end of the stick, do we have any members that could host a few systems for the team?

[Nflight]

This is an interesting read - has anyone ever heard of Freecycle ?
This is used widely where I live and across the country as people get rid of uneeded equipment for free, most times people come to a persons house and retreive the items in question. Other times people have the person who has the item they want removed for whatever reason ship the item to them at a fair and reasonable price.

So what if we start a Computer Freecycle club where everyone who has old antiquated equipment can donate it to people who can use the bits and peices to build items like Beowulf Clusters or Grid Computers. I looked this up on Yahoo Groups - there are 190 clubs who have wording in there description that pertains to computers but there are no direct Naming of Computers and Freecycle. I did a web search and again there is no listing of any web name with Computers and Free Cycle together.. This leaves an opportunity up to those who wish to start something new in the realm of Free Stuff about computers changing hands around the world.

And of course there is the effort to maintain this continuation of operation once you start off. How does the effort pay for the web space, how about google ads? There are a few other items you can do but this would be one way to get your business involved with something good for the whole planet, instaed of throwing all this unused stuff away, find people who would want such stuff. I am a gatherer of stuff myself, and would be willing to get rid of stuff if someone in the team effort would want to enter the AMDusers Computer Freecycle operation leadership!

Your opinions everyone?

[bwhite]

I have a fair amount of socket A stuff that I can donate if anyone wants to do something for the team with it. I lost most of my "farm" in a weather incident last summer...so have all the salvaged parts that are still good. Have since moved into the house with my remaining computers and converted my office into an appartment so don't have the room to setup a large farm right now :-(

[daddygeek]

Hopefully, if God is willing and the creek don't rise, sometime in April I will find a new house here in Central Ohio. I would be willing to house AMD user's supercomputer. I don't believe my wife would mind another rack, and she has gotten used to the noise that my servers make.

[Brucifer]

Hopefully, if God is willing and the creek don't rise, sometime in April I will find a new house here in Central Ohio. I would be willing to house AMD user's supercomputer. I don't believe my wife would mind another rack, and she has gotten used to the noise that my servers make.

That's good!!! :) One issue out of the way for the first mini-farm. How many systems could you host? We need to get worked out too how we would govern the mini-farm, like what projects for instance. Who gets to vote. Can people donate systems for specific projects, as long as the points go to the team account? etc..... How much will the electric be a month? How do we cover that? and so forth.

[daddygeek]

How many systems could you host?
I have no idea how much space that will have in my new house :-k


We need to get worked out too how we would govern the mini-farm, like what projects for instance. Who gets to vote. Can people donate systems for specific projects, as long as the points go to the team account? etc.....

This is were the fun comes in #-o the only idea I am coming up with now. is kind of a stock market approach.

1. Every donation gets a dollar amount attached to it.
2. The dollar amount is then turned into a percentage of the total system.
3. Then that percentage is then the strength of their vote.

There are many problems with this concept, but they can all be worked out. Like setting up the price list. I think I would use
http://www.pricewatch.com/ to get the base prices, but those change constantly , and so I would have to update the vote percentage after any major change to keep current. This would be OK for small amount equipment, but 100 pieces would take quite a while to update the spreadsheet :cry:

How would we work out if someone donated 50ea 100W power supplies. Pricewatch has the price at $25 each, which would be $1250 towards the vote percentage, but what would I do with 50 power supplies , that are too small for today's processors? and on that topic, A farm of 30 386's or 486's is way too much work and to low of output to keep running. so maybe we need to set up a minimum donation list.

[Brucifer]

I agree with the donation issue. Should probably keep things within the late model Celeron/P4, and say XP1700/1800 or above.

[AMDave]

hehe. My wife and our neighbour were comparing power bills this evening.
I am not popular tonight. Beware the Coven ! :twisted:

I have had 2 goes at the PXE cluster setup. No dice yet. I am convinced that the server was configured correctly but the node's LAN card is not compatible.

I'll have another crack in a month or so.

My local PC shop is uninterested and will not provide any spares for testing...that was a bit of a blow.

[spikey_richie]

Any luck?

[gamer007]

whoa... talk about a massive bump :lol:

[spikey_richie]

Well thank you :wav:

[AMDave]

I did try again back then and ran into hardware problems again and since then have rebuilt the server. If I can find a spare machine again I might give it another bash, but there's no sign of giveaway mobos or machines around here, unfortunately. I see Ubuntu have built LTSP into the standard distro.