[Beowulf] How to handle multi and seperate processors?

Mark Hahn hahn at mcmaster.ca
Sun Dec 23 17:23:53 EST 2007

> Can u tell me how to connect different processors of different types,

it is unusual to connect processors of different types.  but it doesn't
really change anything if processors differ in type, model, speed.

> running in parallel and serial modes
> individually?

I'm not sure what you mean by "parallel mode" - processors are inherently
serial devices.  (processors often temporally switch between different 
threads of serial execution, and it's increasingly common to put multiple
processors on the same chip or in the same package.  even the still exotic
SMT type of processor is executing multiple serial threads, though with 
some (still temporally exclusive) sharing of processor resources.)

> Each of these machines handles its own tasks and also handles a module or
> part of the larger group task.

but that is the norm.  the closest to "parallel mode" would be when a 
processor decides to run a particular thread of execution which differs
from other threads by either a thread-id or MPI rank id.  it will normally
also be operating on at least partially different data from other threads.
the basic distinction in parallel programming is whether the threads 
assume a shared/common memory address space, or whether they only interact
by sending messages to each other.  you can implement one using the other,
but both hardware and aspects of the workload can make one or the other 
more appealing/efficient/etc.

> DO u think we can deploy parallel computing or use Beowulf in this case.

beowulf just means "a message-passing cluster composed of commodity parts,
(usually Linux + PCs + MPI)".  nothing that really implies that all the 
processors have to be identical, even the same architecture.  you could 
build a multi-architecture shared-memory system as well, but it would be 
a significant challenge (consider gp-gpu as a multi-arch shm machine...)

regards, mark hahn.
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