[Willsondavid]

Hi,

I am new to cluster and have a beginner question.

I have a computer with Xeon Silver CPU and want to buy a new computer with Xeon Gold CPU.

I wonder if these two computers can be built into a cluster. I heard the cluster nodes should be the same configuration. Is this true? Thanks in advance.

[naffrancois]

Hello,

No they do not have to. It is far from optimal, as your cluster will run at the slowest cpu speed when running all cpus, unless you use custom load-balancing. But you should observe a perfomance increase by using all cpus vs only gold cpus, as they are probably not from a different generation.

[wkernkamp]

Originally Posted by Willsondavid

Hi,

I wonder if these two computers can be built into a cluster. I heard the cluster nodes should be the same configuration. Is this true? Thanks in advance.

It does not say so, but I am assuming that you want to use the cluster for CFD. This is possible, even when the cpus are not the same. You can balance the load to take full advantage of the available two cpus by assigning the proper number of cores from each computer to the mpi run. For a cluster of just two computers that is not hard to do.



(Obviously, people managing large clusters prefer all nodes to be interchangeable to avoid the hassle.)

[sharonyue]

> I wonder if these two computers can be built into a cluster.

Yes. It works. Please see this link I wrote, in this way, two workstations can be connected together for OpenFOAM calculation

https://cfd-china.com/topic/5502

> I heard the cluster nodes should be the same configuration.

No. Different configuration can be connected. But the performance depends on the slowest one.