Homemade supercomputer

You will still be using the OS through the same logical stream on a single device.

The question is, "what do you mean by super computer???" If you mean melding all of the processor capabilities, my sense still says no- unless you are using them as networked devices under the control of a third machine.

Left to themselves, they will use the native OS at precisely the capabilities of the processor at the device.

Good Luck!

Edit, punctuation typo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_computing

How much time do you have for this project?

If all you are attempting to do is Network the 2 units together you can do that easily enough and share Files & or Printers depending on what you want to do or even play Network Games.

But a Super Computer No! Your Current Hardware and Software doesn't allow for any form of Clustering and even if you moved to a Windows 2003 ES Server Product that does support Clustering there is nothing powerful enough here to even come close to being classed as a [b]Super Computer.[/b]

At the very best you may be able to achieve the performance that you would get from a Dual Core CPU but even then I very much doubt it and as there are already Quad Cores on the Market it would be much cheaper just to buy the new hardware and use that which will exceed the abilities of your current Hardware in a Clustered Form.

Though if you want to make then work faster you can dump the Windows Installs and load a form of Linux which will allow them both to work much better than they currently are.

Col

you can definitely combine those comps to have a combined processing power. super computer? hardly. maybe it will run a little faster, but you would need a lot more for a supercomputer.

recently a guy in Australia tried to buy a supercomputer from the government, they said no of course, so he went out and bought 20 [i think] playstation 3's and set them up on a lan network. he then went and "hacked" them to access their processing power to make his own little super computer. its also important to note he had to have his computer in there to control them all, and basically his computer would activate a program or whatever and distribute it across the 20 ps3's. thats almost a full supercomputer, so thats the amount of power your looking at needing. [the reason it works is because he would of exploited the graphics cards, physic accelerators and cpu's in them. a ps3's graphics card, due to the amount of complexity and detail in their games, is capable of a few teraflops. this guys little set up would be coming close in processing power to NASA's Columbia supercomputer [about a third of Columbia's power i think]

what some mad hackers [hahahaha] do is go to a dell website or something and order like a hundred server computers [major processing power, blade servers can have about 2 quad cores, and these are usually bunched into tens, rack servers can have 4 quad core xenons, and tower servers can have 2 quad cores] that they then link up with Ethernet box's and get em all running as extra processors for their computers which gives them a proper super computer, kinda pricey, but as much power a civilian can have.

if you have a bit more money and status you can buy cluster systems from companys like ibm. much more power in a more compact space. real super computers are made out of these, or alot of free standing procecors and memory banks.

so, in summary, you can link your computers and have some shared processing going on, but that is not a supercomputer.

A sewer a pooptown.
So this person must live not too far away from the sewers. Unless of course he does not like where he lives. :)

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

But when you have around three and upwards you will need to Cluster them. Or you can do this with your neighbours computers over a network. :)
"A computer cluster is a group of linked computers, working together closely so that in many respects they form a single computer. The components of a cluster are commonly, but not always, connected to each other through fast local area networks. Clusters are usually deployed to improve performance and/or availability over that provided by a single computer, while typically being much more cost-effective than single computers of comparable speed or availability".
More info on Clustering computers here:
http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/Projects/parallel_computing/cluster_design.html

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

You are basing your standpoint on:

[i]"The question was could the two computers be hooked together to combine their computing power (at least that?s how I interpret the question)"[/i]

The OP originally asked:

[i]"I have two computers. One is an HP pavilion laptop with an AMD 2 ghz single core processor. The other is a Dell desktop with a pentium 4 2.8 ghz processor. Both have windows xp. I also have a crossover cable.
I was wondering if I could [b][u]use these things to make a small supercomputer?[/u][/b]"[/i]

This question requires little or no interpretation - the OP had a 2GHz laptop and a 2.4GHz desktop. [u]Oh - and a crossover cable![/u]

That was it, that was all the hardware involved, no extras, no cloud cuckoo land, no dreams of untold riches involved in the purchase of a myriad of add-on boxes - NOTHING. [b]PERIOD.[/b]

Thus, your list of further requirements:
[i]* Windows XP
* Windows Server
* Interix (Unix environment subsystem for Windows)
* Message Passing Interface software
* Cluster Controller software
* Visual Fortran
* Math Kernel Libraries
* Computational Cluster Monitoring software
* Parallel Linear Algebra Package
* Visual Studio .NET[/i]

[b]trips and falls over when it passes Item #1 - Windows XP.[/b]

You also failed to explain that his crossover cable would be superfluous to requirements. Perhaps you were blinded by the thought of all that other stuff.. what was it again?

Oh yes - Windows Server, Interix (Unix environment subsystem for Windows), Message Passing Interface software, Cluster Controller software, Visual Fortran, Math Kernel Libraries, Computational Cluster Monitoring software, Parallel Linear Algebra Package, Visual Studio .NET.

He couldn't even trade-in his crossover cable for that lot! ;)

Edited for layout.