Pooch Cluster Software for Mac Adds OpenMPI Support

by , 3:20 PM EDT, April 29th, 2008

Dauger Research announced on Tuesday that their Pooch Pro clustering software version 1.7.6 now taps the OpenMPI implementation that shipped with Mac OS X,"Leopard."

With the addition of OpenMPI support, the total of clustering communication protocols now comes to seven in Pooch.

• MacMPI_X - UCLA AppleSeed
• mpich - Argonne National Laboratory
• MPI-Pro - MPI Software Technology, Inc.
• mpich-gm - for Myrinet hardware from Myricom, Inc.
• LAM/MPI - Pervasive Computing Labs, Indiana University
• MPJ Express - University of Reading and partners (New in 1.7.5)
• Open MPI - Open System Laboratory, Indiana University, and collaborators (New in 1.7.6)

"After clustering Macs for ten years, ours is still the simplest way to get into clustering", said Dr. Dean Dauger, President of Dauger Research, Inc. "With Pooch we try to be MPI implementation-agnostic, and Open MPI is meant to work with as many technologies as possible, so Pooch and Open MPI working together is an obvious fit. Pooch combines a modern user experience with supercomputing technologies like Open MPI; the result is reliable, accessible, 'ad hoc', powerful Mac clusters."

Pooch technology combines powerful, numerically-intensive parallel-computing clusters with the famed ease-of-use of the Macintosh, applying the best of cluster and grid computing. Version 1.7.6 connects to Open MPI built into Leopard via a pair of software modules, as specified by the Open MPI architecture. This connection enables Pooch to communicate with Open MPI so its daemons can launch the MPI application. Pooch can then identify and track Open MPI's execution.

Pooch requires networked Macintoshes and/or Xserves running Mac OS X 10.2 or later, Mac OS X Server 10.2 or later, and/or Mac OS 9 with CarbonLib 1.2 or later with 16 MB of available RAM and 4 MB of disk space. Pooch Pro requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later and/or Mac OS X Server 10.2 or later. The Open MPI features require Mac OS X 10.5 or Server 10.5 or later.

Pooch v1.7.6 is priced at US$175 for the first compute node then US$125 for each node thereafter. Pooch Pro v1.7.6 is priced at US$200 for the first compute node then US$150 for each node thereafter.

Dr. Dauger and Pooch were recently profiled on William Shatner's HeartBeat of America series.