From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,2b09bdd136f0eae2,start X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: swhalen@netcom.com (Steve Whalen) Subject: GNAT/GLADE on Beowulf SuperComputer or ? Date: 1998/05/17 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 353931331 Sender: swhalen@netcom14.netcom.com Keywords: GNAT GLADE Beowulf Ada95 Organization: ? Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-05-17T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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, 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). -- {===----------------------------------------------------------------------===} Steve Whalen swhalen@netcom.com {===----------------------------------------------------------------------===}