Tdgrocks - Benchmark

There exist several open source operating systems for PC clusters. To identify the optimal OS for our PC cluster, testing of various OS was performed. Four popular cluster OS were compared, namely, ROCKS 2.3.2, OpenSCE 1.6, OpenMosix 2.20 and OSCAR 2.1 were installed in 4 VLANs divided created from the big cluster, each with 1 master node and 15 slave nodes. All installation procedures of the above OS were documented. The ease of installation and the ease of usage of each OS was considered. Based on these tests it was decided in mid May 2003 to use ROCKS because of its high performance and compatibility, and ease of installation and maintenance. In addition, it was decided that OpenMosix might be used on a trial basis on some of the cluster nodes as it requires less specialized programming than ROCKS. Unfortunately, the speed-up in program performance over serial programs is less for OpenMosix than for Rocks. The documentation of the reports and documentations can be found below:

• ROCKS
  • http://www.sci.hkbu.edu.hk/hpccc/benchmark/rocks
• OpenMosix
  • http://www.sci.hkbu.edu.hk/hpccc/benchmark/OpenMosix
• OpenSCE
  • http://www.sci.hkbu.edu.hk/hpccc/benchmark/sce
• OSCAR
  • http://pwww.sci.hkbu.edu.hk/hpccc/benchmark/oscar