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Xgrid. High Performance Computing for the rest of us. History. 1980s – Steve Jobs founds NeXT which creates OPENSTEP operating system programming interface Award winning Zilla.app is found on OPENSTEP First end-user distributed computing system to make use of the screen-saver motif
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Xgrid High Performance Computing for the rest of us
History • 1980s – Steve Jobs founds NeXT which creates OPENSTEP operating system programming interface • Award winning Zilla.app is found on OPENSTEP • First end-user distributed computing system to make use of the screen-saver motif • 1997 – Apple acquires NeXT and Zilla • 2004 – first beta release of Xgrid based on ZIlla
How Xgrid Works • Built on top of BEEP(Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol) • BEEP reuses many network protocols (asynchronous communications, transport layer security, peer authentication, etc) • Allows you to piggy-back your messages through it over the network
How Xgrid works • Creating Agents is as simple as installing software and defining agent type • Agents will find controller across network themselves and make themselves available • Agents distributed across internet will only have to specify a host name and IP address of the controller
How Xgrid works • Scoreboard feature of controller will allow it to find the right Mac for the job based on RAM and CPU specifications • Will reassign tasks on its own based on failed or unavailable nodes • Provides a performance display for instant efficiency feedback
Concerns • All responsibility falls onto the Controller • Failure of the controller could result in complete job loss • Tight information coupling requires newly added use of LnxMPI to pass messages between tasks
Uses • Ontario Cancer Institute at the University of Toronto uses Xgrid for Monte Carlo simulations of photons on tissue samples • Mathematical researchers led by Dr. Peter Borwein at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia have used to find low autocorrelation binary sequences. • Created a system running at over 30 GHz • NASA uses Xgrid to predict jet noise in simulations
Uses • Mac lab at LaTech • Has 10 iMac computers that can be utilized • Can utilize the ease of set up to allow students to focus on parallelism in their applications as opposed to getting bogged down in their set up. • An easy entry point in to HPC