LINUX and parallel systems.

General Discussion
1

OK Linux looks good but there are so many. The node boards will do some fairly simple number crunching swap some data with neighbour boards via the usb ports and repeat the cycle. After a number of cycles the sever will want some data back. As its so simple I wonder which version would be best on the node boards as I dont want to use up RAM for unwanted functions. Also I had a look at using the Intel Atom dual CPU on the nodes.

I want to string a bunch of small PC boards together into a parallel computing system and wonder if linux will be a good system to use. I am considering a board like the Jetway JNF77 VIA NANO 1.6GHz Mini-ITX Mainboard with 8GB sd memory and having the boards talking with each other through the USB ports and to a control PC via the gigabit network. The application is fairly simple, compute and exchange data etc, and requires lots of processors with lots of loacal memory. I usually program with visual c. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks

2

Linux would be the ideal OS for such a system, Google “Beowulf Cluster”, or “Linux HPC”, or “Linux cluster”, etc. there are many websites that will provide help in building/configuration.

Including this one (as pointed out elsewhere on this forum by Noobuntu):

http://www.clustermonkey.net//content/view/211/1/1/1/

http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/

I’m not a programmer, so wouldn’t like to comment on how easy the transition would be, but again there is masses of info/sites out there covering the gcc and IDE’s.