Re: tlug: Clustering Linux Boxes

[Darren Cook <darren@example.com>]

>Now the question that I have is that will making a cluster(eg: Avalon with 
>Extreme Linux) give me performace advantages for all my programs, or do they 
>need to be specially coded to take advantage of the cluster.  If they need 
>to be specially programed, what is the feasibility of coding/implementing a 
>transarent layer(a module maybe) that will allow the Linux kernel to 
>automatically distribute the separate threads/tasks to the various nodes in 
>the cluster???  Or do I have no idea what I'm talking about ;-)

It would be nice to have something like this so you could just tell Linux
which other computers to use, and everything would be transparent. But you
need to know the purpose of the thread before you can assign it to a remote
computer.

If it is waiting for keyboard input, or producing screen output, then it
doesn't make sense to run it on another computer. If two threads are
designed to share memory then running them on seperate computers will cause
problems (or at least make them run more slowly). Also if the lifetime of
the thread is short the overhead of setting it running on another machine
will start to dominate.

Darren

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