BareMetal Node

[IanSeyler]

BareMetal Node is a new HPC OS/platform we are working on and has now been through a successful test.

BareMetal Node is a stripped down version of our BareMetal OS and the current size of the OS binary is just 6560 bytes in size.

Using the PrimeSMP test program in BareMetal OS we can show that performance scales with the amount of CPU cores you allocate to the program. The Orchestrator is still a work in progress (We need to set parameters manually and results are not delivered back yet) but the results are very promising!

Webpage is here: http://www.returninfinity.com/baremetalnode.html

[shikhin]

I'd say neat.

Regards,
Shikhin

[cxzuk]

+1

[Brendan]

Hi,

Looks cool to me too.

One question though: If Orchestrator needs a Linux machine on the network (which could easily have a DHCP server and TFTP server installed), then why do the nodes need hard drives? With (optional) network boot, the nodes could just be "CPU + memory + ethernet" which would mean lower hardware costs, less power usage (and air-conditioning), less noise, and much easier/faster kernel updates (just change the file/s on the server and reboot the nodes).


Cheers,

Brendan

[Jezze]

Well done! Just add network boot like brendan said and it would be even more awesome.

I see the nodes doesn't use memory protection. Adding paging would perhaps not be a bad idea if only to relieve the application programmer of having to use a specific physical address to load their programs too. (like the app.ld file I see you used)

Also, you could have a more accurate measurement of how long the calculation took. Like milliseconds instead of seconds. After that it would be nice to see how much faster one of your applications are on BareMetal Node compared to say Linux.

[clange]

Hi

Just notices that you got to the frontpage of /r/programming/

Keep up the good work.

clange

[IanSeyler]

Network booting works well in VirtualBox. We are waiting for some i8254x NICs that support PXE and will record a new video once they arrive.

[IanSeyler]

Latest video showing PXE booting and the collection of results: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccLef8GLl6g