[ubuntu-uk] FW: High Performance Computing

[Ian Pascoe]

Dave

Ah-ha!  thanks for clearing that up - I admit that the articles I have read
so far seemed to use the terms interchangeably.

Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: ubuntu-uk-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com
[mailto:ubuntu-uk-bounces at lists.ubuntu.com]On Behalf Of Dave Ewart
Sent: 24 April 2007 14:04
To: ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] FW: High Performance Computing


On Monday, 23.04.2007 at 22:14 +0100, Ian Pascoe wrote:

> I'm surprised about the kernal level - I'd have thought with all the
> tooing and froing about running virtual machines and so on just lately
> that the projects would be clamboring to get the virtualisation stuff
> into the main line 2.6.2x kernal.
>
> Or, have I led myself up the garden path of total mis understanding
> out onto the back lane of total ignorance by getting virtualisation
> and cluster / parallel computing mixed up?

I think you're mixed up.

Clustering: typically running many physically-separate systems as a
single logical processing machine

Virtualisation: typically, running many virtual operating systems on a
single physical machine

Parallel: typically running a single 'program/job/application'
simultaneously on multiple CPUs

Virtualisation works very well under 2.6.x

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cluster
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_computing and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machines

Examples of each:

Clustering: OpenMOSIX, MOSIX Virtualisation: VMware, Xen Parallel: any
multi-threaded application

Dave.

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