Hi
I'm thinking about 2-3 mini itx and try and build a cluster...but something still puzzles me....what can I actually do ?? I mean what is the difference between having just one mini itx, and several mini itx clustered together?? does it make processing data quicker such as encoding a video or a song.....what about gaming?? can you actually play really good games such as Quake III with a mini itx and a really good graphics card??
Thanks
Chris

Clusters are great for number crunching, but as a general rule most people opt for an OpenMosix cluster for home use. OpenMosix works by assigning threads (processes) to idle or lesser strained CPUs in the cluster.

This works great if you want to open about 15 programs on a single PC, but have other PCs in the cluster pick up a balanced quantity of work.

For gaming, not a good idea. If the lesser CPU spec in the cluster is more idle than the fastest one, it could be assigned the gaming thread - big UH OH! Then again, it may happen vice versa.

the thing with OpenMosix is, it doesn't combine the CPU power. It acts like a multi-CPU machine, as opposed to adding up all the CPU power. So no, it won't let speed up video encoding. It will however allow you to do more than one video encoding, each one using one CPU. so if it took you 20 minutes on one machine(assuming the machines were the same CPU power), it would still take 20 minutes, but you'd be able to have 3 done.

Some computing tasks are inherently linear. For example, any time when you need the data from calculation A to perform calculation B, B cannot start before A, regardless of number of CPUs in use.

However, new techniques and algorithms have permitted more and more parallelization. For example, ATI's CrossFire and NVidia's SLI technology allow multiple GPUs to work on gaming and video rendering. Similar technologies are becoming available for processing.

In most applications, the CPU is not the limiting factor. Excepting gaming, 3d rendering, video compositing and the like (which many/most users never do), your memory and particularly your hard drive will be much, much slower.

Can you run OpenMosix if you've already built up your cluster with something like Rocks or Oscar?