Re: [Sheflug] Clustering

["Chris J" <cej [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> 
> It occurred to me that even when people are doing fairly normal office tasks
> their PCs are under utilised.  I found a knoppix distro called
> ClusterKnoppix that seems to be a project where all PCs on a network work
> cooperatively to acheive a goal of getting things done.

http://www.distributed.net/

Not strictly speaking a cluster, but all my spare machine cycles go into doing
at least something constructive :) Similarly, Seti if breaking encrpytion
isn't your thing :)

> 
> I'm not so much after answers as ideas or places to look to find out more.
> 

Someone's already sent you in the direction of Beowulf, which is probably the
main Linux project in this arena. NASA, IIRC, make heavy use of Beowulf. 
However, I'm not sure office-style apps could help. Usually, apps need to be
written so they are cluster aware. I've never looked into Beowulf, so can't
say if that adds a layer of abstraction between the App and the cluster. It's
something to keep in mind :)

Chris...

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