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Posted to mapreduce-user@hadoop.apache.org by Roberto Nunnari <ro...@supsi.ch> on 2013/01/17 09:24:21 UTC

building a department GPU cluster

Hi all.

I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.

In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators) 
to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.

As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE), 
with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is 
that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.

Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some 
new HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.

- 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
- 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
- 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
- 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
(Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)

I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to 
the right direction.

In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and 
resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by 
many users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, 
just like we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)

Thank you very much for your valuable insight!

Best regards.
Robi

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Colin McCabe <cm...@alumni.cmu.edu>.
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:24 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>
> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators) to
> assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>
> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>
> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>
> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to the
> right direction.
>
> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>

My understanding (although I could be wrong) is that only one task is going
to be able to use the GPU at a time, so you're going to have to take that
into account when configuring MR.

3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>

Whatever NVIDIA's kernel module supports best-- probably RHEL.

4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>
> You probably want to write the code in C or C++ and use Hadoop streaming
plus whatever libraries you need in order to use CUDA.  nvidia.com should
have more information about that.  CUDA is an NVIDIA-proprietary technology.

Colin

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Roberto Nunnari <ro...@supsi.ch>.
Thiago Vieira wrote:
> I've seen some academic researches on this direction, with good results. 
> Some computations can be expressed by GPGPU, but it is still a restrict 
> number of cases. If is not easy to solve problems using MapReduce, solve 
> some problems with SIMD is harder.

Ok.. Thank you all for your time.. I'll keep searching.
Best regards.
Robi


> 
> --
> Thiago Vieira
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 9:24 PM, Russell Jurney 
> <russell.jurney@gmail.com <ma...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in
>     the past, but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.
> 
>     Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com
> 
>     On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <jeremy@lewi.us
>     <ma...@lewi.us>> wrote:
> 
>>     I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use
>>     case; the types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very
>>     different although a quick google search did turn up some. So this
>>     is probably not the best mailing list for your question.
>>
>>     J
>>
>>
>>     On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
>>     <roberto.nunnari@supsi.ch <ma...@supsi.ch>> wrote:
>>
>>         Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>>
>>             Hi all.
>>
>>             I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the
>>             right direction.
>>
>>             In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT
>>             administrators) to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered
>>             workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>>             As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed
>>             using SGE), with my boss we talked about building a new
>>             GPU cluster. The problem is that I have no experience at
>>             all with GPU clusters.
>>
>>             Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we
>>             already have some new HW that looks promising to me as a
>>             starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>>             - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>>             - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>>             - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>>             - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>>             (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>>             I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice
>>             and/or hint to the right direction.
>>
>>             In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>>             1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs)
>>             GPU cluster?
>>             2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a
>>             queuing and resource management system? We would like the
>>             cluster to be usable by many users at once in a way that
>>             no user has to worry about resources, just like we do on
>>             the CPU cluster with SGE.
>>             3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>>             4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>>             Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>>             Best regards.
>>             Robi
>>
>>
>>         Anybody on this, please?
>>         Robi


Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Roberto Nunnari <ro...@supsi.ch>.
Thiago Vieira wrote:
> I've seen some academic researches on this direction, with good results. 
> Some computations can be expressed by GPGPU, but it is still a restrict 
> number of cases. If is not easy to solve problems using MapReduce, solve 
> some problems with SIMD is harder.

Ok.. Thank you all for your time.. I'll keep searching.
Best regards.
Robi


> 
> --
> Thiago Vieira
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 9:24 PM, Russell Jurney 
> <russell.jurney@gmail.com <ma...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in
>     the past, but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.
> 
>     Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com
> 
>     On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <jeremy@lewi.us
>     <ma...@lewi.us>> wrote:
> 
>>     I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use
>>     case; the types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very
>>     different although a quick google search did turn up some. So this
>>     is probably not the best mailing list for your question.
>>
>>     J
>>
>>
>>     On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
>>     <roberto.nunnari@supsi.ch <ma...@supsi.ch>> wrote:
>>
>>         Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>>
>>             Hi all.
>>
>>             I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the
>>             right direction.
>>
>>             In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT
>>             administrators) to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered
>>             workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>>             As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed
>>             using SGE), with my boss we talked about building a new
>>             GPU cluster. The problem is that I have no experience at
>>             all with GPU clusters.
>>
>>             Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we
>>             already have some new HW that looks promising to me as a
>>             starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>>             - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>>             - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>>             - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>>             - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>>             (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>>             I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice
>>             and/or hint to the right direction.
>>
>>             In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>>             1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs)
>>             GPU cluster?
>>             2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a
>>             queuing and resource management system? We would like the
>>             cluster to be usable by many users at once in a way that
>>             no user has to worry about resources, just like we do on
>>             the CPU cluster with SGE.
>>             3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>>             4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>>             Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>>             Best regards.
>>             Robi
>>
>>
>>         Anybody on this, please?
>>         Robi


Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Roberto Nunnari <ro...@supsi.ch>.
Thiago Vieira wrote:
> I've seen some academic researches on this direction, with good results. 
> Some computations can be expressed by GPGPU, but it is still a restrict 
> number of cases. If is not easy to solve problems using MapReduce, solve 
> some problems with SIMD is harder.

Ok.. Thank you all for your time.. I'll keep searching.
Best regards.
Robi


> 
> --
> Thiago Vieira
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 9:24 PM, Russell Jurney 
> <russell.jurney@gmail.com <ma...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in
>     the past, but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.
> 
>     Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com
> 
>     On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <jeremy@lewi.us
>     <ma...@lewi.us>> wrote:
> 
>>     I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use
>>     case; the types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very
>>     different although a quick google search did turn up some. So this
>>     is probably not the best mailing list for your question.
>>
>>     J
>>
>>
>>     On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
>>     <roberto.nunnari@supsi.ch <ma...@supsi.ch>> wrote:
>>
>>         Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>>
>>             Hi all.
>>
>>             I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the
>>             right direction.
>>
>>             In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT
>>             administrators) to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered
>>             workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>>             As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed
>>             using SGE), with my boss we talked about building a new
>>             GPU cluster. The problem is that I have no experience at
>>             all with GPU clusters.
>>
>>             Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we
>>             already have some new HW that looks promising to me as a
>>             starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>>             - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>>             - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>>             - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>>             - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>>             (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>>             I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice
>>             and/or hint to the right direction.
>>
>>             In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>>             1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs)
>>             GPU cluster?
>>             2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a
>>             queuing and resource management system? We would like the
>>             cluster to be usable by many users at once in a way that
>>             no user has to worry about resources, just like we do on
>>             the CPU cluster with SGE.
>>             3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>>             4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>>             Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>>             Best regards.
>>             Robi
>>
>>
>>         Anybody on this, please?
>>         Robi


Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Roberto Nunnari <ro...@supsi.ch>.
Thiago Vieira wrote:
> I've seen some academic researches on this direction, with good results. 
> Some computations can be expressed by GPGPU, but it is still a restrict 
> number of cases. If is not easy to solve problems using MapReduce, solve 
> some problems with SIMD is harder.

Ok.. Thank you all for your time.. I'll keep searching.
Best regards.
Robi


> 
> --
> Thiago Vieira
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 9:24 PM, Russell Jurney 
> <russell.jurney@gmail.com <ma...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in
>     the past, but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.
> 
>     Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com
> 
>     On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <jeremy@lewi.us
>     <ma...@lewi.us>> wrote:
> 
>>     I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use
>>     case; the types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very
>>     different although a quick google search did turn up some. So this
>>     is probably not the best mailing list for your question.
>>
>>     J
>>
>>
>>     On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
>>     <roberto.nunnari@supsi.ch <ma...@supsi.ch>> wrote:
>>
>>         Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>>
>>             Hi all.
>>
>>             I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the
>>             right direction.
>>
>>             In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT
>>             administrators) to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered
>>             workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>>             As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed
>>             using SGE), with my boss we talked about building a new
>>             GPU cluster. The problem is that I have no experience at
>>             all with GPU clusters.
>>
>>             Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we
>>             already have some new HW that looks promising to me as a
>>             starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>>             - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>>             - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>>             - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>>             - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>>             (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>>             I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice
>>             and/or hint to the right direction.
>>
>>             In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>>             1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs)
>>             GPU cluster?
>>             2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a
>>             queuing and resource management system? We would like the
>>             cluster to be usable by many users at once in a way that
>>             no user has to worry about resources, just like we do on
>>             the CPU cluster with SGE.
>>             3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>>             4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>>             Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>>             Best regards.
>>             Robi
>>
>>
>>         Anybody on this, please?
>>         Robi


Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Thiago Vieira <tp...@gmail.com>.
I've seen some academic researches on this direction, with good results.
Some computations can be expressed by GPGPU, but it is still a restrict
number of cases. If is not easy to solve problems using MapReduce, solve
some problems with SIMD is harder.

--
Thiago Vieira


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 9:24 PM, Russell Jurney <ru...@gmail.com>wrote:

> Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in the
> past, but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.
>
> Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com
>
> On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us> wrote:
>
> I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
> types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
> a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
> mailing list for your question.
>
> J
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari <roberto.nunnari@supsi.ch
> > wrote:
>
>> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all.
>>>
>>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>>
>>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>>
>>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>>
>>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some
>>> new HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>>
>>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>>
>>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>>> the right direction.
>>>
>>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>>
>>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>>
>>> Best regards.
>>> Robi
>>>
>>
>> Anybody on this, please?
>> Robi
>>
>>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Thiago Vieira <tp...@gmail.com>.
I've seen some academic researches on this direction, with good results.
Some computations can be expressed by GPGPU, but it is still a restrict
number of cases. If is not easy to solve problems using MapReduce, solve
some problems with SIMD is harder.

--
Thiago Vieira


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 9:24 PM, Russell Jurney <ru...@gmail.com>wrote:

> Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in the
> past, but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.
>
> Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com
>
> On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us> wrote:
>
> I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
> types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
> a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
> mailing list for your question.
>
> J
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari <roberto.nunnari@supsi.ch
> > wrote:
>
>> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all.
>>>
>>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>>
>>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>>
>>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>>
>>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some
>>> new HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>>
>>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>>
>>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>>> the right direction.
>>>
>>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>>
>>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>>
>>> Best regards.
>>> Robi
>>>
>>
>> Anybody on this, please?
>> Robi
>>
>>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Thiago Vieira <tp...@gmail.com>.
I've seen some academic researches on this direction, with good results.
Some computations can be expressed by GPGPU, but it is still a restrict
number of cases. If is not easy to solve problems using MapReduce, solve
some problems with SIMD is harder.

--
Thiago Vieira


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 9:24 PM, Russell Jurney <ru...@gmail.com>wrote:

> Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in the
> past, but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.
>
> Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com
>
> On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us> wrote:
>
> I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
> types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
> a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
> mailing list for your question.
>
> J
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari <roberto.nunnari@supsi.ch
> > wrote:
>
>> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all.
>>>
>>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>>
>>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>>
>>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>>
>>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some
>>> new HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>>
>>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>>
>>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>>> the right direction.
>>>
>>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>>
>>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>>
>>> Best regards.
>>> Robi
>>>
>>
>> Anybody on this, please?
>> Robi
>>
>>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Thiago Vieira <tp...@gmail.com>.
I've seen some academic researches on this direction, with good results.
Some computations can be expressed by GPGPU, but it is still a restrict
number of cases. If is not easy to solve problems using MapReduce, solve
some problems with SIMD is harder.

--
Thiago Vieira


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 9:24 PM, Russell Jurney <ru...@gmail.com>wrote:

> Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in the
> past, but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.
>
> Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com
>
> On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us> wrote:
>
> I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
> types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
> a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
> mailing list for your question.
>
> J
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari <roberto.nunnari@supsi.ch
> > wrote:
>
>> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all.
>>>
>>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>>
>>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>>
>>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>>
>>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some
>>> new HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>>
>>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>>
>>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>>> the right direction.
>>>
>>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>>
>>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>>
>>> Best regards.
>>> Robi
>>>
>>
>> Anybody on this, please?
>> Robi
>>
>>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Russell Jurney <ru...@gmail.com>.
Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in the past,
but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.

Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com

On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us> wrote:

I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
mailing list for your question.

J


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>
>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>
>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
>> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>> the right direction.
>>
>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>> Best regards.
>> Robi
>>
>
> Anybody on this, please?
> Robi
>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Russell Jurney <ru...@gmail.com>.
Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in the past,
but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.

Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com

On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us> wrote:

I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
mailing list for your question.

J


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>
>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>
>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
>> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>> the right direction.
>>
>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>> Best regards.
>> Robi
>>
>
> Anybody on this, please?
> Robi
>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Russell Jurney <ru...@gmail.com>.
Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in the past,
but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.

Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com

On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us> wrote:

I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
mailing list for your question.

J


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>
>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>
>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
>> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>> the right direction.
>>
>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>> Best regards.
>> Robi
>>
>
> Anybody on this, please?
> Robi
>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Russell Jurney <ru...@gmail.com>.
Hadoop streaming can do this, and there's been some discussion in the past,
but it's not a core use case. Check the list archives.

Russell Jurney http://datasyndrome.com

On Jan 17, 2013, at 9:25 AM, Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us> wrote:

I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
mailing list for your question.

J


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>
>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>
>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
>> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>> the right direction.
>>
>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>> Best regards.
>> Robi
>>
>
> Anybody on this, please?
> Robi
>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us>.
I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
mailing list for your question.

J


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>
>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>
>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
>> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>> the right direction.
>>
>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>> Best regards.
>> Robi
>>
>
> Anybody on this, please?
> Robi
>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us>.
I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
mailing list for your question.

J


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>
>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>
>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
>> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>> the right direction.
>>
>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>> Best regards.
>> Robi
>>
>
> Anybody on this, please?
> Robi
>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us>.
I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
mailing list for your question.

J


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>
>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>
>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
>> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>> the right direction.
>>
>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>> Best regards.
>> Robi
>>
>
> Anybody on this, please?
> Robi
>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Jeremy Lewi <je...@lewi.us>.
I don't think running hadoop on a GPU cluster is a common use case; the
types of workloads for a hadoop vs. gpu cluster are very different although
a quick google search did turn up some. So this is probably not the best
mailing list for your question.

J


On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 5:18 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Roberto Nunnari wrote:
>
>> Hi all.
>>
>> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>>
>> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators)
>> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>>
>> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
>> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
>> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>>
>> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
>> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>>
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
>> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
>> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
>> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
>> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>>
>> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to
>> the right direction.
>>
>> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
>> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
>> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
>> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
>> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
>> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>>
>> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
>>
>> Best regards.
>> Robi
>>
>
> Anybody on this, please?
> Robi
>
>

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Roberto Nunnari <ro...@supsi.ch>.
Roberto Nunnari wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
> 
> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators) 
> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel 
> computing.
> 
> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE), 
> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is 
> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
> 
> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some 
> new HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
> 
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
> 
> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to 
> the right direction.
> 
> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and 
> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by 
> many users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, 
> just like we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
> 
> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
> 
> Best regards.
> Robi

Anybody on this, please?
Robi


Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Colin McCabe <cm...@alumni.cmu.edu>.
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:24 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>
> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators) to
> assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>
> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>
> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>
> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to the
> right direction.
>
> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>

My understanding (although I could be wrong) is that only one task is going
to be able to use the GPU at a time, so you're going to have to take that
into account when configuring MR.

3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>

Whatever NVIDIA's kernel module supports best-- probably RHEL.

4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>
> You probably want to write the code in C or C++ and use Hadoop streaming
plus whatever libraries you need in order to use CUDA.  nvidia.com should
have more information about that.  CUDA is an NVIDIA-proprietary technology.

Colin

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Roberto Nunnari <ro...@supsi.ch>.
Roberto Nunnari wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
> 
> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators) 
> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel 
> computing.
> 
> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE), 
> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is 
> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
> 
> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some 
> new HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
> 
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
> 
> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to 
> the right direction.
> 
> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and 
> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by 
> many users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, 
> just like we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
> 
> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
> 
> Best regards.
> Robi

Anybody on this, please?
Robi


Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Roberto Nunnari <ro...@supsi.ch>.
Roberto Nunnari wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
> 
> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators) 
> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel 
> computing.
> 
> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE), 
> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is 
> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
> 
> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some 
> new HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
> 
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
> 
> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to 
> the right direction.
> 
> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and 
> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by 
> many users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, 
> just like we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
> 
> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
> 
> Best regards.
> Robi

Anybody on this, please?
Robi


Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Roberto Nunnari <ro...@supsi.ch>.
Roberto Nunnari wrote:
> Hi all.
> 
> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
> 
> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators) 
> to assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel 
> computing.
> 
> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE), 
> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is 
> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
> 
> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some 
> new HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
> 
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
> 
> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to 
> the right direction.
> 
> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and 
> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by 
> many users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, 
> just like we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
> 3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
> 4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
> 
> Thank you very much for your valuable insight!
> 
> Best regards.
> Robi

Anybody on this, please?
Robi


Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Colin McCabe <cm...@alumni.cmu.edu>.
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:24 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>
> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators) to
> assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>
> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>
> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>
> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to the
> right direction.
>
> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>

My understanding (although I could be wrong) is that only one task is going
to be able to use the GPU at a time, so you're going to have to take that
into account when configuring MR.

3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>

Whatever NVIDIA's kernel module supports best-- probably RHEL.

4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>
> You probably want to write the code in C or C++ and use Hadoop streaming
plus whatever libraries you need in order to use CUDA.  nvidia.com should
have more information about that.  CUDA is an NVIDIA-proprietary technology.

Colin

Re: building a department GPU cluster

Posted by Colin McCabe <cm...@alumni.cmu.edu>.
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:24 AM, Roberto Nunnari
<ro...@supsi.ch>wrote:

> Hi all.
>
> I'm writing to you to ask for advice or a hint to the right direction.
>
> In our department, more and more researchers ask us (IT administrators) to
> assemble (or to buy) GPGPU powered workstations to do parallel computing.
>
> As I already manage a small CPU cluster (resources managed using SGE),
> with my boss we talked about building a new GPU cluster. The problem is
> that I have no experience at all with GPU clusters.
>
> Apart from the already running GPU workstations, we already have some new
> HW that looks promising to me as a starting point for a GPU cluster.
>
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge R720
> - 1x Dell PowerEdge C410x
> - 1x NVIDIA M2090 PCIe x16
> - 1x NVIDIA iPASS Cable Kit
> (Dell forgot to include the iPASS adapter for the R720!! :-D)
>
> I'd be grateful if you could kindly give me some advice and/or hint to the
> right direction.
>
> In particular I'm interested on your opinion on:
> 1) is the above HW suitable for a small (2 to 4/6 GPUs) GPU cluster?
> 2) is apache adhoop suitable (or what could we use?) as a queuing and
> resource management system? We would like the cluster to be usable by many
> users at once in a way that no user has to worry about resources, just like
> we do on the CPU cluster with SGE.
>

My understanding (although I could be wrong) is that only one task is going
to be able to use the GPU at a time, so you're going to have to take that
into account when configuring MR.

3) What distribution of linux would be more appropriate?
>

Whatever NVIDIA's kernel module supports best-- probably RHEL.

4) necessary stack of sw? (cuda, hadoop, other?)
>
> You probably want to write the code in C or C++ and use Hadoop streaming
plus whatever libraries you need in order to use CUDA.  nvidia.com should
have more information about that.  CUDA is an NVIDIA-proprietary technology.

Colin