This is complex, if not complicated.. but bear with me on this.
Concept:
I'm looking to build a high performance cluster in order to achieve several goals. The secondary and tertiary goals of the cluster are easily accomplished, however there are aspects in the primary goals that have left me a little, well, overwhelmed.
The primary point of the cluster project I'm running is a Quantum Theory, and Simulated Social Studies research hub. There would be long term testing of simulated scenarios, along with variant scenarios for each "build" of an original scenario. Each build would be a general evolution in the engine, allowing for older scenarios the time to evolve on their own and compare to newer simulations with improved reasoning, and agent object models.
I've been looking into programs like SimWorld, gLife, and Conway's Game of Life, but I've failed in my attempts to get them working on my Debian Sarge machine. However, I do plan on running these simulations on something more like Libranet, although I'm currently searching for a distro which has some of these installations included already.
I found one distro called Pyro, but again.. it failed to load. I think I may have gotten a bad download on that, but it works up to a point then just collapses, which makes me think it might be a hardware issue...
Either way, in this aspect, I plan on actually using more than 50% of my clusters processing on running simulations (factoring in scaling, and simulation terminations) at all times, with up to 80% at its peak times.
So, here's my questions:
1. Any AI/AS distros out there besides Pyro?
1a. If you have tried Pyro, did it work? Was the documentation accurate? (I'm still learning after all... can't RTFM, if the FM isn't worth a D)
1b. If yes to (1), then how was the documentation for this distro?
1c. If you know of a good aLife distro in general, let me know that one as well...
2. I'm familiar with SLi bridges, dual CPUs, and the general concept of bridging hardware; however, I'm not sure if this is possible with 2 network cards (effectively raising your transfer rate, and/or speed)?
2a. If possible, how do I go about this in a generic sense (think knoppix user)?
2b. If possible, is this worth the time/effort?
3. In terms of Artificial Intelligence, does anyone have a good direction to start in? The information on the topic is wide, and varied amoung Unix and Linux (sometimes in a very deceptive way), so I get lost in the concepts too easily and I often fall into a unix program suite that makes my imagination run faster, jump higher, etc etc... I just need for find steps 1 and 2, then the rest tends to fall in line.
4. Also, I'm going to also be looking into making my own distros.. I'm sure there's a quicklink somewhere on here, but I've never been good with forums... especially all those stickies telling me to read them... I'm just too defiant inside I suppose... anyway, link me?
Background:
I'm a now former Windows developer (ASP/SQL specifically) and PC technician. Former IT technician, and web developer.. I'm in the process of starting up a business which will offer services ranging from internet radio broadcasting/hosting, internet cafe services, video/graphic/sound production and rendering services to private consultation and artist management.
My personal projects and interests range, but have a bad habit of rotating around conceptual design and development. AI has been a passion for some time, however, until recently, the resources have never presented themselves. Now that I have a means, I'm looking to apply this passion to help further study of AI/AS.
