linking processing power

daveleebond

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I have a laptop, desktop and server at home, on 24/7(networked). is there anyway of combining their CPU's to do such tasks as encoding?
 
encoding for what?, at uni we set up a render farm, basicly a bunch of old computers, we networked them using some program and used all them running at the same time to process and render a 3d model
 
encoding for what?, at uni we set up a render farm, basicly a bunch of old computers, we networked them using some program and used all them running at the same time to process and render a 3d model

dvd to avi's, mainly and the odd bit of Photoshop, just seems a waste i have these cpu's doing nowt
 
im sure theres some appys for video encoding about that will send out the tasks to other cpu's available on the network
 
dvd to avi's, mainly
In that case, dvd::rip might be something you can look at. You'll need linux machines, but you 'should' be able to use boot cds if you have to. I don't know of anything for windows, since it's really not designed for clustering.

The dvd::rip program is just a script that pulls together various lower tools (ffmpeg, transcode etc) into one package, so there's nothing stopping you doing it manually. If you split the source VOBs into seperate bits and then just encode each bit on a different machine, you'd get much the same effect.

Hope this gives you some ideas.
 
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this is a pretty heavyweight requirement. Some companies spend tens of thousands using citrix to set up a server farm like this. Possibly grid computing is something you may want to explore, there is software that will help you set this up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_computing#Software_implementations_and_middleware

But, I am going to guess you dont really need this much computing power etc. Instead you may well be better off using a build server farm to control individual tasks on each machine in order. There are loads that are free, cruisecontrol is a very popular one. Just set it up on each machine to do a specific thing and then link them all together.
 
i know all about citrix supported and implemented farms several times.

just wondering as a concept that a program could split a file into equal parts, encode, then reassemble

suppose its me just bein bored :(.

would that dvd::rip work on vista boxes, each running kumbunu virtual machines.
 
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would that dvd::rip work on vista boxes, each running kumbunu virtual machines
Actually it would. That's not a bad idea at all. Aren't VMs great. You'd have to make sure the network interfaces were bridged (so that each machine's vm can see the others), and the performance wouldn't be optimimal, but it'd be worth a try.
 
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I reckon you'll be able to play more than 'tic tac toe', but be careful. Just make sure you remember the password. Joshua if i remember correctly.
 
I've seen this done with PS2's as well but do like a Mini iTX

The "Mini-Cluster"

Early supercomputers used parallel processing and distributed computing and to link processors together in a single machine. Using freely available tools, it is possible to do the same today using inexpensive PCs - a cluster. Glen Gardner liked the idea, so he built himself a massively parallel Mini-ITX cluster using 12 x 800Mhz nodes.

The machine runs FreeBSD 4.8, and MPICH 1.2.5.2. After working with his machine and running some basic tests, Glen's cluster looks to be equivalent to at least 4 (maybe 6) 2.4Ghz Pentium IV boxes in parallel on a similar network - achieving a performance of around 3.6 GFLP. With the exception of the metalwork, power wiring, and power/reset switching, everything is off the shelf. Rather impressive we'd say - though he *is* root on a 1.1 TFLP 528 CPU monster, the 106th fastest computer in the world...

h**p://www.mini-itx.com/projects/cluster/
 
I reckon you'll be able to play more than 'tic tac toe', but be careful. Just make sure you remember the password. Joshua if i remember correctly.

no 'joshua' was the logon no, password, tight security.

i wanna play thermo global nuclear war!


(should not of really put them words in, probably flagged by the NSA now :)
 
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