The AppleSeed Web site — which looks at a parallel Mac cluster for numerically intensive computing and should be of interest to those interested in a “plug and play parallel computer” — has been updated with new features that anticipate the “widespread use of OS X in the coming year,” according to Viktor Decyk, one of the site’s founders.
“The latest release of OS X has known issues with our software,” he said. “Apple has told us they will be fixed in a future release of OS X. Until then, you can prepare for parallel computing on X by using our latest software with CarbonLib on OS 9.”
Project AppleSeed is a way to transform a cluster of Power Macs into a parallel processing system. Decyk, Dean Dauger, and Pieter Kokelaar of UCLA’s Department of Physics created their own parallel processing “supercomputer” using a cluster of Power Mac G3s and G4s, some commercial networking hardware, and some software they designed themselves.
The AppleSeed Web site features a variety of do-it-yourself tips on constructing parallel-processing systems from Power Macs, what sort of off-the-shelf software you can use to help manage the systems, and how to write your own parallel processing-savvy software. The Web site’s newest major additions and changes include:
Updates to the AppleSeed Recipe and the Frequency Asked Questions page reflect the new software additions and other changes.