BCR - Beowulf / Cluster / Renderfarm
Modern computer applications needs more and more computing power.
To supply the demand, the industry offers clusters (or very expensive Supercomputers).
Unfortunately, most of the cluster solutions are standard PC's, stacked or side by side, which waste room, power and money.
My solution is also based on standard PC components, but has instead complete PC's only one power supply unit, a HUB or Switch and many CPU-Units:
The power supply unit and the CPU-Units must be in the same rack, because only the power supply unit has fans for cooling them.
A CPU-Unit consists:
-One or more CPU's (directly heat conducted to the big heat sink)
-Mainboard (+onboard LAN)
-RAM
-A Bootdevice:
-For Windows a Harddisk
-For Linux a Bootrom (this means absolutely no moving parts, but somewhere in the cluster must be a Harddisk available)
There is no need for:
-CPU Fans
-A power supply unit for each node
-A Harddisk, except for Windows
-Expensiv KVM-Switch boxes nor Video Cards, only a Server-BIOS with serial access (or a monitor and a keyboard on a wagon)
The most important device is the power supply unit. It has the following functions:
-Power supply
-Power sequencer and individual turn on/off the nodes
-Cooling of the CPU's
The advantages at a glance:
-more favorable
-less maintenance (because less moving parts)
With this we reached the end of my presentation.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Mail: marc@marc-schaffer.ch