[Bioclusters] Anyone interested in clustering transmeta cpus?

[Ivo Grosse]

Hi Chris,

chris dagdigian <dag@fedayi.sonsorol.org> wrote on Fri, 24 Aug 2001:

> Right now the bladed systems have 2 main drawbacks that I see:
> 
> o 512mb SDRAM max on current blades (next product iteration has 1GB DDR)

... and even 1 GB per node might often be too small to run useful BLAST 
jobs.

> o No possibility of a PCI slot; this rules out Myrinet and other high
> speed interconnect technologies

... is a fast communication between the nodes really important in 
bioinformatics applications, which are typically embarassingly parallel?

The limiting feature that I see is the small RAM and possibly low 
performance of the CPU.  It is true that Dell or Compaq servers are 
more expensive, but they also might be much faster.  It would be very 
interesting to see the performance per price of the RLX system, and to 
compare it to the preformance per price of, say, Dell or Compaq 
servers.  Hence, I am excited to see your benchmark results.

Ivo