From: Bill.Saunders@launchpad.unc.edu (Bill Saunders)
Subject: Distributed computing under Linux?
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 00:29:47 GMT

Hello all,
	I'm wondering if anyone has thought of trying to get a
multiprocessing system working under Linux?  Last night I was
trying to compile something while talking on the modem.  I only 
have a 386-40mhz machine and the constant disk access was making
things go slowly.  I thought about speeding things up by setting
up a network in my home with just a 386 motherboard and a hard
drive and ethernet card.  Then using X and Linux I would be able
to transfer the source over to the second machine and compile it
there without a speed loss.  
	Then I thought about going to the minimal.  What if all
I had was the 386 and memory and ethernet card?  It wouldn't speed
up disk access(in fact it would slow it down-across the ethernet),
but I could run another program over there and basically not 
slow down my machine.  Could this be done?  Does X running on the
remote machine need a video card?  A pretty inexpensive system 
with just a 386mb,4meg RAM, and a ethernet card coud be made. Probably
less than $400 bucks.  Would this be practical?  Is it cheaper to 
get a 486-33mhz or two or three 386-40's?
	Then my brain had a massive surge of thought, what if
someone rewrote the kernel and made it distributed?  Networks
are getting faster and faster.  FDDI(fiber optics) can push 100Mb
compared to 10Mb(not sure of units but sure of values) on 
ethernet.  This would be a complicated job but it has been done.
	It would be easier to write a set of routines to do remote
procedure calls.  The benefit of rewriting the kernel would be
that less memory would be required on the remote(slave) computers.
If we use X or remote procedure calls then the whole Linux kernel
needs to be running on the remote machine.
	Last but not least.  Did anyone read in DDJ in July and 
August about PORT.  If what I read coalessed correctly in my brain
PORT is a intermediate P-code like language very fast to interpret.
If someone would write an interpreter for this for several different
machines then we could have multivender multiprocessing. IE my
TRS-80 could help by calculating one pixel of my fractal while the 
rest of the fractal was calculated by my machine(ha ha).  I don't
see any other way of using this other than RPC's(remote procedure
calls) but still I know of several fast machines at the university.
It would be great to be able to use them to speed somethings up.
	AnywayS, the main question is - is it possible to hook up
a 386 Mb, 4Meg RAM, a remote booting ethernet card and run Linux 
and X on it?????
				Bill Saunders
				bills@outlaw.uwyo.edu
ps- sorry for the long post!

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Speed kills - but at least it's a quick way to die!
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