Those UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) AppleSeed computer guys are at it again. According to their online info, they’re up to a cluster of 25 Macs, including G4’s, and have even published a guide for running their multi-processing application on a single, multi-processor Mac.
Project AppleSeed is a way to transform a cluster of Power Macs into a parallel processing system. Viktor 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.
Also, Project AppleSeed is featured on Apple’s new science and technology Web site. The site outlines unique ways that the Macintosh is used in scientific research and technology development.