Junk Super Computer Assimilates All 182
VonGuard writes "The ACCRC is the relatively famous computer recycling non-profit in Berkeley that builds clusters out of old hardware. Make Blog has an article about the Center's plans to build a cluster out of the equipment people bring to recycle at Make Faire later this month. The ACCRC geeks are now able to integrate PII's or better into the cluster, which will be powered by Vegetable Oil and run Parallel Knoppix."
You must warn them all! (Score:1, Funny)
Soon they'll be breeding us like cattle!
Re:You must warn them all! (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah... I'm not holding my breath. Quit trying to get our hopes up...
Re:You must warn them all! (Score:3, Insightful)
veggie oil? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2)
Re:veggie oil? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think their idea is to counteract the concept that for the same amount of power, they could be running much more powerful hardware. If the electricity comes from coal, they're wasting energy, but if it comes from biodiesel they're... uh... wasting energy in a way that sounds good to hippies?
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2)
I'm a hippie. I don't know too much about biodiesel except from what I've heard and read. I'm not that terribly interested in it, but lets look at the differences in this wasted energy. Coal is pressed plants that t
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2)
Wind disrupts weather patterns? Unless you're talking about curbing global warming, I've never seen a shred of evidence that wind turbines affect the weather. As for hydroelectric power, it's one of the environmentally worst types of renewable energy. Building dams destroys valuable farmland, floods priceless natural habitat, and screws up fish migration.
Hippie nonsense aside, I think t
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2, Informative)
The big problem with coal and oil power is that they use a resource that effectively does not regenerate on a human scale. While there's nothing *really* wrong with digging up oil and burning it (except pollution, which you mentioned), it's kinda dumb to be dependent on it, because it *is* going to run out at some point. It doesn't take a geologist to do the math there.
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2, Interesting)
If we were talking hydrogen, you'd be complaining about using up our water for fuel.
The trick is to adapt, and we will, we always do. Malthus was only wrong because things change.
When the usual price of energy creeps too high this will create a profit motive for additional research and development as well as making higher priced alternatives more attractive as the economics change. (And no, even at $3 a gallon our energy is still insanely cheap)
Pani
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2)
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2)
if I remember my physics, correctly, the power lost during transmission is proportional to i^2 where i is the current
That's why they use transformers to lower the current and increase the voltage.
Re:veggie oil? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. But you'd add the inefficiency of having to transport the natural gas somehow. Which also costs energy. No, natural gas floating in pipes is *not* obviously that much more energy-efficient than electrons floating in wires, it depends on the details. (one thick pipe offers less friction than many small ones, higher voltage power-lines give lower losses)
if I remember my physics, correctly, the power lost during transmission is proportional to i^2 where i is the current.
Yeah. In absolute terms. But offcourse in this case your power transmitted is higher too, so your losses, measured as a percentage, doesn't go up that rapidly.
The oposite is also true though: If you up the voltage, then you can scale back the current needed for a certain power by the same amount, which leads to lower losses. Multiply your voltage by 10, and you can divide current by 10, and still transmit the same power. But at 1/10th the current, this means, by your formula, that the losses are now only 1/100th of what they where.
I thought the process of transforming the energy to and from that state was fairly inefficient (but better then sending it down the power line without doing it. It's been a long time.
Where'd you get that idea ? Large transformers achieve efficiencies in the 99.75% range, and even the small ugly wall-wart transformers that are mass-made at a buck a piece from the cheapest possible materials frequently manage to come in at 95%
It's like the fact that modern day farms are actually far less efficient then ones from 100 years ago, from an energy perspective.
Yes. But only from that perspective, which isn't the one we're trying to optimise for. Our current economical system optimises for production-efficiency. And a single person working on a farm produces probably 100 times more than a single person working on a farm did 100 years ago.
Energy isn't lacking. Not even *clean* energy is lacking, there's plenty of it to go around. The only reason it's not dominant is that currently non-clean energy is cheaper. It's perfectly possible to make clean energy enough to supply current and forseeable needs. But the thing is, with current tech it costs more. I don't know the numbers for US, but for example in Norway wind-power costs double of normal power (which is hydro with us, so also clean, but let's ignore that). In Germany there's a minimum prize given for home-produced energy of $0,50 or so, which is more than enough to make it a paying proposition (i.e. you make a *profit* by installing solar-cells on your roof), but which also happens to be like 4 times the price of conventional power.
A farm using only clean energy would still be a hell of a lot more efficient than the ones 100 years ago. But thing is: it'd be *less* (financially) efficient than the farms that burn oil. So that's what's happening.
But the scale is slowly tipping. The price of oil and gas has raised a lot, and ist likely to raise a lot more. The price of solar, wind, hydro, thermal and so on has all been falling steadily, and will continue to do so.
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2)
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2)
supply:demand
That's the beauty of the ratio: it varies.
Re:veggie oil? (Score:2)
It's cool to cluster computers together, it's cooler to make that cluster out of the odds-and-ends of PC 'junk', and it's even cooler to run it off of an alternative power source. :)
Make Faire (Score:2)
Bit redundant, do do you think?
Re:Make Faire (Score:3, Funny)
learn from the flashmob supercomputer (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:learn from the flashmob supercomputer (Score:5, Informative)
-Wake On LAN support is huge, so that rules out the old machines with the clicky power switch.
-Trying to do anything with less than 32 megs of RAM is a PITA.
On top of that older machines don't always have a NIC, so you're stuck scrounging for parts. Plus who knows what kind of cryptic Acer-Packard Bell-eMachines crap hardware you're going to get via donations (so building a boot image can be a pain), so you're opening youself up to tracking down odd bits of unsupported yet essential hardware drivers (PCI Controllers stand out.)
Clustering gets way easier when you can stick to at least the same general system brand (e.g. Dell) or even better, identical systems.
Etherboot (Score:2)
So it would seem that if you were going to troll for donations, your minimum spec would be something that either had a bootable NIC in it, or was capable of accepting one that you'd be able to acquire easily (i.e., has PCI slots, no old ISA garbage).
If it was me trying to b
Re:learn from the flashmob supercomputer (Score:2)
Having an almost completely heterogeneous computer system is not something I would want to use or admin. I know a little about this stuff...
Re:learn from the flashmob supercomputer (Score:2)
Re:learn from the flashmob supercomputer (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:learn from the flashmob supercomputer (Score:2)
Not to mention 5x+ the likelihood of a hardware failure because there are 5 of every part that can and will fail and that the machines are already old. Plus ease of use, and admin maintenance.
The Question Remaining (Score:4, Funny)
So the only question remaining is: What are they rendering?
My guess: PETA [peta.org]'s new 3D logo.
__
Custom Research Paper [elephantessays.com]
Re:The Question Remaining (Score:1)
So the only question remaining is: Am I supposed to bring my own vegetable oil?
Re:The Question Remaining (Score:2)
What I hated about that place... (Score:2, Informative)
As for PC's, there is a charity in Berkeley that takes donated PC's, refurbs. them and gives them to families that can't afford a computer.
The City of Albany (next door to Berkeley) had a day where you could take almost any kind of electronic device and dispose of it for free (no large applicances). They plan on doing this yearly duri
Re:What I hated about that place... (Score:1)
All this electronic equipment that we love so much is made up of some very, very unpleasant substances. Dumping it in a landfill or shipping it to a country that doesn't care about its environment doesn't count as proper disposal.
Working equipment is fine to be donated to charities who can use or redistribute it, but
Re:What I hated about that place... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What I hated about that place... (Score:1)
This IS the place that fixes PC's and gives them to charities, non-profits, and underprivlidged individuals.
The ACCRC was the recycler that took all of the equipment for free at the Solano Street fair, the day in Albany to which this post refers. The Solano Street fair will probably host the ACCRC for free recycling again next this year. No one from Albany has called to set this up yet, however.
Oh, and the AC
Don't forget to mention the... (Score:2)
What a colossal... (Score:5, Informative)
State-of-the-art computers are probably about 15 times as fast as Pentium II-based computers, and consume maybe twice as much electricity.
Or take Pentium M-based computers, they consume less electricity than Pentium II-based computers and are probably about 10 times as fast.
Just my 2 cents.
Re:What a colossal... (Score:1)
It really depends on what they're doing with the machines. If they're running it as a diskless thin cluster then, yeah, newer chips draw less power. But each node is probably drawing less than a hundred watts (max) in the first place.
Waste of energy? (Score:2)
So, if your goal is to get the best performance / killowatt-hour, you're better off running fewer, newer, machines.
Actually the OP advocated using '...State-of-the-art computers...'. That's fine if you can afford them, these guys may be using old inefficient hardware but they are getting it for free and if they are running the whole mess on bio diesel the electricity
how much total energy... (Score:1)
Re:What a colossal... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What a colossal... (Score:2)
Running old computers as supercomputers makes no sense. I do have one, though, that I run as a home network server. They are great for that.
Re:What a colossal... (Score:1)
65 CPUs from 100 MHz to 3066 MHz [tomshardware.com]
Re:What a colossal... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a colossal... (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.beowulf.org/archive/2003-March/009658.h tml [beowulf.org]
http://www.beowulf [beowulf.org]
Re:What a colossal... (Score:1)
-DrkShadow
Back to the Future (Score:3, Funny)
Marty McFly: [startled] What did you say?
Dr. Emmett Brown: A bolt of lighting. Unfortunately, you never know when or where it's ever gonna strike.
Marty McFly: Hmmmm... What about vegetable oil?
Dr. Emmett Brown: Well of course, vegetable oil. But where are we going to get vegetable oil in 1955?
Re:Back to the Future (Score:1)
Re:What a colossal... (Score:2)
Some sample energy consumption figures... (Score:4, Interesting)
Just for comparison's sake, I borrowed some Kill-A-Watt meters and measured my gear.
The shocker was how low the Mini's power consumption was, and how high the celeron router. Also, the Xserve, Mini, and Dual P3 all had power factors of .99, whereas the celeron had a power factor of about .6...ie, not power-factor corrected.
Oh, and switchgear? Varied from 1W (yes, ONE watt!) to ELEVEN for an old 100BaseT switch. The lowest power consumers were newer hubs, second by a pair of gigabit switches I bought within the last year that were about 5-7W.
Re:Some sample energy consumption figures... (Score:2)
Re:What a colossal... (Score:1)
Re:What a colossal... (Score:1)
Modern computers being 15 times faster than P-IIs?
I seriously doubt it. Take the slowest P-II ever, the P-II/266, as reference. 15x that means, what, a P4 at 4GHz?
Sorry, no way it is that faster. Maybe a P3 core at 4GHz, assuming overall improvements besides the clock speed.
Personally, I do think that a P3/866-1GHz is worth for such tasks.
You may say about being u
Re:What a colossal... (Score:2)
Sure, but consumer PCI devices still run at 33MHz. The only thing you're getting here is main memory bandwidth.
Re:What a colossal... (Score:2)
Re:What a colossal... (Score:2)
Re:What a colossal... (Score:2)
They're only paying for the few chemicals needed to make biodiesel to fuel the generator that powers the cluster.
-JesseRe:What a colossal... (Score:2)
To make this clearer, lets say you discovered 100t of gold on your property. Maybe you make your house out of gold, maybe you make it out of bricks. If you sold the gold you could buy a lot of bricks. Which would you do?
...reclamation of fuel & CPU cycles? (Score:2)
Reminds me of days of yore.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Worth it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Worth it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Worth it? (Score:2)
I suppose you could argue that this still contributes to global warming or carbon desequestration or something, but that's taking things a bit far. Plus the carbon in the vegetable oil is eventually going to be released anyway.
If you're getting the energy from a source like that, which is bo
Re:Worth it? (Score:2)
Re:Worth it? (Score:2)
I would guess just barely this side of solar-powered calculators...
energy is cheap. computation is not. It's that simple - look at the laws of thermodynamics... the universe hates free energy, that much is clear, but even more than free energy it hates organization, information, computation.
Making computation a much scarcer resource than free energy...
Familiar sight (Score:1)
Yes, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:1)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:1)
Once it runs, then what? (Score:2)
It is the cluster equivalent of how many people you can stuff into phone booth. If you have nothing better to do, well why not I guess.
Re:Once it runs, then what? (Score:2)
Re:Once it runs, then what? (Score:2)
A great deal... (Score:2)
Now let's assume you have an application where you can't efficiently divide the work such that there is no intrinsic codependency between node work, and that what you say holds, t
Must be getting old... (Score:2)
I remembered when they used to be powered by vacuum tubes and ran one instruction at a time.
Re:Must be getting old... (Score:1)
Re:Must be getting old... (Score:2)
MFLOPS/W (Score:2)
Re:MFLOPS/W (Score:2)
Moore's law... (Score:2)
When computing power grows exponentially, you need an exponential (in the age of the machines) number of old machines to do the work of one new one. And that is even before you consider all the losses to parallelism, the big electricity bill, and all the know-how needed to put them together!
But it is pretty cool.
Tor
Re:Moore's law... (Score:2)
Re:Moore's law... (Score:3)
And hence... (Score:2, Funny)
Saw this years ago on 20/20 or 60min (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, he was talking of building a supercomputer way back then. So the group has put some thought into this.
If this turns out that it actually has some horsepower I can't wait to hear how it is put to use. The guy who started this is way ahead of the curve. Turning garbage into a self powered supercomputer...kewl!!
Experimentation (Score:2, Interesting)
Cool (Score:2)
We Are Trapperkeeper (Score:1)
Screw you, Fatass.
Heh, screw YOU!
I wish them luck... (Score:4, Interesting)
As it turned out, a single 1.1GHz P3 was doing more folding than 12 350MHz P2's working in parallel. I scrapped the cluster and sold the parts on eBay. My electricity bill dropped about $100 a month afterwards. Again, I wish them luck.
Hex (Score:2)
I did this once (Score:2, Interesting)
They charge a fee to donate? (Score:2)
Not worth it (Score:2)
Re:Not worth it (Score:2)
And don't forget Linux people tend to do things simply because they can. However I agree this is not great feat. This was plugging in a bunch of computers to a switch tossing in some CD's and powering up the boxes
What can you *do* with a cluster? (Score:2)
Re:Frist "Beowulf Cluster" post! (Score:1)
Re:Frist "Beowulf Cluster" post! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Frist "Beowulf Cluster" post! (Score:1)
Re:Frist "Beowulf Cluster" post! (Score:1)
Re:Why give them to a million dollar university ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why give them to a million dollar university ? (Score:2)
Re:Why give them to a million dollar university ? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Why give them to a million dollar university ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why give them to a million dollar university ? (Score:1, Interesting)
20" Monitors? Amazing at the time. So I lifted one...or tried to because apparently they have plutonium in them or something, it weighed 80 lbs it seemed. Got a cart, loaded it up, raced home, wife rolled her eyes...and then I realized you can't plug them into your Gateway PC without an ad