Newsgroups: comp.parallel.mpi
From: eddemain@neumann.uwaterloo.ca (Erik Demaine)
Subject: Re: Compaq, Microsoft, Tandem in Cluster Pact
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 20:13:30 GMT
Message-ID: <DGM06I.1By@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>

Hari Kalva (hari@ctr.columbia.edu) wrote:
: I just read this news; Doesn't MPI facilitate the kind of clustering mentioned
: -------
: Compaq Computer Corp. is collaborating with Tandem Computers 
: Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to develop an industry standard for clustering, which
: enables the resources of several computer servers to be linked. 
: Compaq says it will work with Tandem, a mainframe computer maker, on an
: industry-standard means of providing high-speed, fault-tolerant messaging
: between clustered servers based on Tandem's ServerNet architecture. 

Although the MPI *standard* doesn't have any support for fault-tolerance (yet),
it's probably possible to make an implementation with some.  It seems odd that
these Corp's feel there's need for a standard when there's a standard (MPI)
that took 1 year to design (and has been considered quite thoroughly).  In
addition, I'm surprised they don't mention PVM...

Is this the Tandem company that makes two-person bicycles? :)

Erik
--
Erik Demaine                 \/  Masters student in Computer Science
Dept. of Computer Science    /\  e-mail: eddemain@neumann.uwaterloo.ca
University of Waterloo       \/  URL   : http://barrow.uwaterloo.ca/~eddemain/
Waterloo, ON Canada N2L 3G1  /\  DO NOT READ THIS SENTENCE--it is false.

