GNAT/GLADE on Beowulf SuperComputer or ?

GNAT/GLADE on Beowulf SuperComputer or ?

[Steve Whalen]

I'm doing some planning. I'd like to consider using Ada95 for software
development (in preference to C or C++) in a parallel programming
environment.  I'd like to get some input on whether or not any effort
has been made to port or seriously study using GNAT/GLADE (or any
competing products) on a "pile of PC's" type "low cost" SuperComputer
(Beowulf using Linux/Ethernet being the current low cost performance
leader).

For those not familiar with Beowulf, there is a web site at
"http://cesdis1.gsfc.nasa.gov/beowulf/" and CalTech has one of the
more powerful systems (114 Pentium processors) described at
"http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/research/beowulf/".

Unfortunately (to my way of thinking) the only languages typically
supported are C, C++ and Fortran (I've not found a single Beowulf site
with any flavor of Ada available).  So it looks like I would have to
include some Ada specific $/time for porting of Ada95 tools to a
Beowulf environment in order to enable it's use. I just need some
input on difficulty and/or feasability.

I know very little about GLADE, therefore I conclude it would be quite
easy to set up GNAT and GLADE on a Beowulf machine<g>, and use the
distribution features of GLADE to enable use of the massively parallel
machine. Beowulf / Linux should take care of doing this quite
efficiently. (Isn't ignorance wonderful?) GLADE / Ada95's distribution
Annex are what I would like to substitute for the C/C++ special
compiler and toolkits that are currently used for non-Fortran
programming on Beowulf machines.

Are there any major problems with this scheme that I'm missing? Has
anyone tried it?

Are there competing products that would run on a Beowulf setup (Linux
with Beowulf network patches + Pentium or Alpha + Ethernet + message
passing)?

Steve

P.S. I'm NOT interested in any recommendations for other more
expensive SuperComputing options, as this would be basically an
"embedded" SuperComputer, so hardware costs are everything, and
Beowulf acheives the lowest costs available by using "commodity" PC
components with no "vendor markup" (i.e. by definition, I doubt it's
possible to get equivalent parallel processing power more cheaply
because all the software is "free" (per unit), and all the hardware is
selected to be at the most cost effective price/performance points).




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                    Steve Whalen     swhalen@netcom.com
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