New Pooch v1.8.3 Ships

Dauger Research ships version 1.8.3 of the Pooch family of clustering software today. Several updates to Pooch for OS X 10.7 "Lion" include: Pooch revised to disable use of deprecated components such as Network Services Library Conversion of the Pooch Installer and Pooch Package to Universal Binary Conversion of other Unix-level components to PowerPC and Intel fat binary Other minor fixes See the Pooch Manual for further details. Pooch users can renew their subscriptions today!

 New Pooch v1.8.2 Ships Today

 New Pooch v1.8.1 Ships Today

Anticipating WWDC 2010, Dauger Research ships version 1.8.1 of the Pooch family of clustering software today. Changes include: Updated Open MPI support for Snow Leopard, 64-bit, and G5s Extended support for computer names composed of non-Roman characters, such as Japanese Bundled with a new version of the Pooch QuickTime Exporter with added compatibility with iMovie '08 and '09 Updated methods to acquire local IP addresses Other minor updates and fixes See the Pooch Manual for further details. Current Pooch users can renew their subscriptions today!

  Pooch at Supercomputing 2009

Please see Advanced Cluster Systems' booth 2295, on the northwest end of the exhibit hall near the Wolfram Research booth, starting Tuesday, where we can answer questions about this solution. If you are attending SC09 or are in the Portland area, please come by to say hello.

  Ten Years of Mac Clustering

Dauger Research Presents at WWDC 2008 On Wednesday, June 11, 2007, 6:30 pm, Dauger Research will be presenting at the WWDC 2008 Scientific Development Poster Session, in the Howard St. corridor on the 2nd floor of Moscone West, on 'Ten Years of "Plug-and-Play" Cluster Computing'. Dauger Research, Inc., celebrates ten years of "plug-and-play" cluster computing at Apple's WWDC. In 1998, a time when the Bondi-blue iMac was new, two UCLA physicists invented the Mac cluster. As a side project, they "reinvented" the cluster computer to better advance their scientific research. Today, reincarnated as the patented Pooch (Parallel OperatiOn and Control Heuristic application) and Pooch Pro clustering software, the technology combines cutting edge supercomputing components like Open MPI and leverages the famed ease-of-use of the Macintosh, producing a solution so easy to use that children have built clusters using it.

"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. "For a decade, we produce reliable, accessible, 'ad hoc', powerful Mac clusters that continue to inspire others in academia, research, and industry. When we built the first Mac cluster ten years ago, we knew we had something great, and it was clear others could benefit. 2008 is a great time to look back and see what sprung from the seed we planted. We thank all the wonderful people who helped us with this vision."

All attendees or others in the San Francisco area, please come by Wednesday evening and say hello. A complete copy of the poster is available.

An earlier oppotunity to meet is at the SF Mac Indie Event on Sunday evening at 5 pm.

Pooch 1.7.6 - Open MPI, Leopard, and Java Support

Version 1.7.6 of Pooch and Pooch Pro ships with Open MPI and Leopard support. The new Pooch now supports seven MPI implementations, combining supercomputing technologies with the ease-of-use of the Macintosh.

This version's new features include: Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard" prompts updates in a variety of Pooch techologies: Network Scan window Preferences window Keychain access Launching via, detection of, and commands to the Terminal Behind the Login window behavior Other user interface and infrastructure adjustments Open MPI support Complete MPI support using libraries built into Leopard Automatically installs Open MPI modules for Pooch

MPJ Express support Launches MPI-style Java code Support .jar and .class execution types

MPI.Init(args); int me = MPI.COMM_WORLD.Rank(); int size = MPI.COMM_WORLD.Size(); System.out.println("Hi from <"+me+">"); MPI.Finalize();

Long file, application, and directory name support AppleScript access to user-defined nodelists and remote network data Other features, optimizations, bug fixes, and updates Ships with new version 1.3 of the Pooch QuickTime Exporter

More in the press release while full details are in the updated Pooch Manual.

  WWDC 2007 Scientific Poster Presentation

Pooch Presented at WWDC 2007 On Tuesday, June 12, 2007, 6:30 pm to 9 pm, Dauger Research will be presenting at the WWDC 2007 Scientific Development Poster Session on how '"Plug-and-Play" Cluster Computing Brings HPC to the Mainstream'. This poster presents Pooch clustering technology for building easy-to-use numerically-intensive parallel computing clusters, and how it applies to Wolfram Research's Mathematica and load-balancing parallelization of QuickTime video compression from desktop video editors like Final Cut Pro. By "reinventing" the cluster computer, we provide a unique solution designed to maximize accessibility for users.

All attendees or others in the San Francisco area, please come by Tuesday evening and say hello. A complete copy of the poster is viewable.

An earlier oppotunity to meet is at the SF Mac Indie Event on Sunday evening at 5 pm.

Enhancements to the AppleEvent interface for job and user data Automatic detection and retry of preferred IP address of remote nodes Pooch Pro automatic user login using Keychain services Other features, enhancements, bug fixes, and updates Two new dashboard widgets for scanning nodes and scanning jobs on the cluster Other feature enhancements, bug fixes, and adaptations to changes in OS X

 
More in the press release while full details are in the updated Pooch Manual.

Pooch 1.6.5 Released Version 1.6.5 of Pooch and Pooch Pro ship today delivering a series of enhancements, behavioral changes, fixes, and adaptations to ongoing changes in the platform. This version's new features include: Enhancements to the command-line interface New support in Pooch Pro for AppleScript access to user data and login state New support in Pooch Pro for import and export of user data via text files

Updates to utilization of technologies specific to Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger": Automator - Three new Pooch actions for Automator workflows Dashboard - View cluster status and activity in an aesthetic environment Spotlight - Updated search plug-in for finding job data Other feature enhancements, bug fixes, and adaptations to changes in OS X   More in the press release while full details in the updated Pooch Manual.

 Pooch in Interview on Frank Peters' Podcast

"Interviewing the Titans of Industry", the Frank Peters Show produces a podcast spotlighting entrenpeneurs and innovative technologies. Frank Peters' latest interview discusses Pooch clustering technology and observations about the computing industry, including both high-performance and personal computing. Subscribe to their podcast via their web site or via iTunes.

  DR Speaks about Pooch at WWDC 2005

Apple Invites Pooch Demo at WWDC 2005 --> Don't miss this session! - Tuesday at 3:30 in The Mission <-- At WWDC 2005 in San Francisco, Apple invites Dauger Research to speak at Session 606: "Mac OS X and Scientific Computing" and demonstrate how the Pooch clustering solution inspires scientific users and developers to excel on the platform. Motivated by the success of Pooch demos at WWDC 2004 and in Apple's Seminar Series on HPC, this session is hosted by Apple's Senior VP of Software Engineering, Dr. Bud Tribble.

Pooch 1.6 Taps Tiger, Grid, and Web

Version 1.6 of Pooch and Pooch Pro are shipping. This version leverages new features of OS X "Tiger", introduces new support for distributed/grid-style computing, user-defined node lists a la iTunes "playlists". All this with a renovated Network Scan window and extended AppleScript support.

Major new features include: Utilization of new technologies in Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger": Automator - Incorporate Pooch actions into workflows Dashboard - View cluster status and activity in an aesthetic environment Spotlight - Locate data in Pooch jobs via the system Xgrid - Pooch makes Xgrid nodes accessible to users

• Adaptations to other adjustments specific to "Tiger"

  Major updates to the Network Scan window. including support for user-defined node lists in their own movable Network pane, a multi-purpose action pop-up menu, an address box, an all-new Network view mode, and even a Search mechanism Extended AppleScript fidelity, exposing additional node, network, and job data

• Support for a new web-based interface

  Support for distributed/grid-style jobs, specifying arbitrary argument ranges for identical executables Revised queuing system with a centralized queue for all users on the system

  Other feature enhancements, bug fixes, and adaptations to changes in OS X

Read more in the press release. Full details are in the new Pooch Manual.

  Pooch Spotlighted on National Television

Pooch Spotlighted on "Keeping America Strong", Hosted by William Shatner

A special focus on Pooch, the only easy-to-use yet supercomputer-compatible cluster computing solution, was broadcast while interviewing Dauger Research, Inc., on "Keeping America Strong". This episode part of a special television broadcast hosted by William Shatner. This production is one of a "Heartbeat of America" TV series focusing on innovative small businesses performing breakthrough work. The program features interviews by Doug Llewelyn, well-known as "The People's Court" reporter, of the team running Dauger Research, with a live Pooch demonstration.

"Keeping America Strong", hosted by William Shatner, awards Dauger Research

Doug Llewelyn interviews Dr. Dauger and Kevin Sinclair, VP Operations, while they perform a live demonstration of clustering with Pooch. The program airs nationwide on Tuesday, May 2, 2005, at 9 AM EST on the AmericanLife Television Network. You may also view the program online.

  Pooch Presented at ICCS 2005

Pooch Presented at International Conference on Computational Science 2005

In Atlanta, GA, Emory University hosts the 2005 International Conference on Computational Science aiming to bring together scientists of all disciplines to discuss problems and solutions for research utilizing computation. Glad to be part of the program, Dauger Research is speaking in a workshop on "Plug-and-Play" Cluster Computing: HPC Designed for the Mainstream Scientist at 3:40 pm on Monday, May 23. If you are in the area, please attend. Full details are available on ICCS web site.

• New Fortran versions of the codes on the parallelization tutorials:
  • Parallel Knock,
  • Parallel Adder, and
  • Parallel Pascal's Triangle

• Updated Pooch Software Development Kit with updated versions of MacMPI_X and MacMPI_S and makefiles for the NAG Fortran compiler.

• Updated Pooch Links page

Pooch in Print

In ComputorEdge, they published an article under their "Mac Madness" column named "Mac SuperComputers and SuperComputer Macs". See pages 30-32 of their February 27, 2004, issue.

Parlez-vous français? Check out the article named "Dans La Famille Clusters..." in the Février 2004 issue of svmMac magazine. You'll find a familiar screenshot of Pooch v1.4 on page 128. (Printed with permission, of course.)

New Content and Updated Pages on the Pooch web site, including:

• The debut of a video presentation of Pooch and Mac Clustering shot in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
• A new Parallel Zoology page describing the differences between parallel computing types, including distributed, grid, cluster, and supercomputer
• New members on the Pooch Users page plus new featured users at:
  • Swarthmore College and
  • Northern Kentucky University
• Updated Pooch Publications page
• Updated Pooch Frequently Asked Questions page
• Updated Site Map
• Updated Pooch Manual
• Explicit links on the new Documentation section:
  • FOSE 2003 presentation
  • IEEE Cluster "Most Innovative" Award
• Reorganized What is Pooch? section
• New forms on the Pooch Purchase page
• and the entire Pooch web site reformatted with a new look.

· January 7: A presentation at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center on the new Pooch v1.4.

Pooch Adds New Brains and Beauty

Version 1.4 of Pooch, the Parallel OperatiOn and Control Heuristic application is shipping. This version introduces a new graphically-based, dynamic job queue and scheduling system taking advantage of Pooch's built-in heuristic functions and cluster diagnostics. It also sports an updated graphical user interface taking advantage of features introduced in Panther, Apple's latest Mac OS X.

Major new features include:

A new queuing and scheduling system for retaining jobs until specific conditions are met integrated with: A new job tracking system designed to track the progress and execution of jobs and retain historical data about terminated jobs

An enhanced and updated graphical user interface that includes the new "brushed metal" look available in OS X 10.3 and later.

The Node Scan Window is now the Network Scan Window, divided into a Node View and a new Job View mode to scan the entire network for queued, launching, running, terminated, and aborted jobs and display statistics about these jobs

An updated Node Info Window displaying additional data and utilizing tabbed viewing and consistency with the OS X user-interface guidelines

New drawers for the Job Window: the Recent Items drawer displays and recalls recently used files and nodes, and nodes of the remote node scan cache, and the Options drawer accesses all options of the job

• An "Automatically Acquire Nodes" feature so jobs can automatically acquire nodes given a minimum number of nodes or processors to acquire starting at any specified node
• An updated, antialiased Start Time dialog for the Job Window

  A new Pooch Preferences window, accessible from the Pooch menu, featuring toolbar-style access to preferences in Pooch, categorized into General, Nodes, and Jobs preference panes. Other enhancements to preferences, including manipulating logout settings

• New installation choices, triggered by the option key, in the Pooch Installer
• A variety of minor bug fixes

Read more in the press release. Full details are in the new Pooch Manual. Other web site updates include:

• New and updated Screenshots of Pooch
• Updated Pooch Features page
• The addition of two new papers in IEEE Cluster 2003 and the Journal of Plasma and Fusion Research on the Pooch Publications page
• Updated Pooch Downloads
• Updated Pooch FAQ page

Dauger Research, Inc., demonstrated and discussed Pooch at the Apple Booth of SuperComputing 2003 in Phoenix, Arizona. Apple Computer invited Dauger Research to join them at the conference and graciously let our team borrow a Power Mac G5 and several Xserves on the show floor. Installation, of course, was quick and painless. We tied these in with machines at UCLA Physics, almost 400 miles away, over the Internet.

Manning the booth were Dr. Dean Dauger (left) and Kevin Sinclair (right). We appreciated all the attendees who stopped by; we especially appreciated their enthusiasm after they were introduced to Pooch.

Updated content on the Pooch web site:

• An updated Pooch - Compiling the MPIs page with new information on using NAG's Fortran and IBM's xlc and xlf
• An updated Pooch Software Development Kit with new information on using IBM's xlf and xlc compilers
• An updated distribution of mpich on the Pooch mpich page for compatibility with IBM's xlc and xlf

• A new Pooch - Writing Parallel track for users writing or learning to write parallel code
• A modified Pooch Site Map page
• A new Pooch Frequently Asked Questions page
• A modified Parallelization page
• Three brand-new tutorials on writing parallel code and converting single-processor code into parallel code:
  • Parallel Knock introduction
  • Parallel Adder example
  • Parallel Pascal's Triangle example
• A modified Pooch Links page
• The Pooch Manual in HTML

• A new Pooch Site Map page
• A new Pooch Top page
• Restructured and updated Features page
• Downloadables reorganized into:
  • Pooch Installers Download
  • Parallel Applications
  • Command-Line Utilities
  • Pooch Software Development Kit
  • Scripting Examples
• A new useful and interesting links page
• A new Pooch Recipe page
• A new Pooch Suggested Deployments page
• A new page describing how to compile the various MPIs in a variety of languages/environments including Metrowerks, Absoft, gcc, and Project Builder
• A new discussion about parallelizing code and the issues that arise
• A new description of the visualization features of MacMPI_X
• Documentation reorganized into
  • The Pooch Manual; and
  • Publications related to Pooch
• A revised Pooch Purchase page
• A revised mailing list page

Pooch Extends Use of Unutilized Computational Power and Command-Line Interface

Version 1.3.5 of Pooch, the Parallel OperatiOn and Control Heuristic application is shipping. This version debuts new features designed to take advantage of the untapped power of a Mac computer lab or other administered environment. It also extends its command-line support with a new suite of command-line tools and the ability to install Pooch via a command line, capabilites designed for the Compute Node XServe. Major new features include:

• The ability to launch jobs on nodes that are logged out. The executables run while the OS X login window is displayed. Off-hours Macs in computer labs or on desktops can now be easily reused as computing clusters without interfering with day work.
• Support for a new suite of command-line utilities, including querying for cluster status and submitting jobs into a command-line based queuing system
• Supports installation via a command line for "headless" machines
• Numerous other user-interface and performance improvements and minor bug fixes

Read more in the press release. Full details are in the Pooch Manual.

At the invitation of Apple Computer, Dr. Dean Dauger of Dauger Research presented the Parallel OperatiOn and Control Application Application and easy-to-use cluster computing at FOSE 2003, the information technology expo for the government marketplace held in Washington, D. C., on April 8-10. Also, the Dauger Research station was manned for the duration of the show.

click to enlarge

If you look carefully in the image, you can see the AltiVec Fractal code running in parallel on the Cinema Display. It was running in parallel on a PowerBook G4 17" and two dual-processor XServes in a nearby rack in Washington, D. C., plus four dual-processor Power Mac G4s at the UCLA Physics Department in Hershey Hall back in Los Angeles, California. At the moment the picture was taken, the results from the local machines just completed, while the results from the UCLA machines were just about to arrive. This cross-continent cluster was regularly achieving upwards of 30 Gigaflops for the passers-by.

View the full sized presentation here.

Apple introduced the Compute Node edition of the XServe. Now available at the Apple Store, a "Compute Node" configuration of the XServe is available for build-to-order purchase. Featuring two G4 processors each running at 1.33GHz, Mac OS X Server, and Gigabit Ethernet, this unit is an ideal building block for your computing cluster, especially given the demonstrated performance of XServe clusters.

Pooch is running on a 33-node XServe cluster at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Using Pooch, the AltiVec Fractal Carbon demo was able to utilize this cluster to achieve 217 billion floating-point operations per second! This is the largest calculation yet performed on an XServe cluster.

The Applied Cluster Computing Group (formerly known as the High-Performance Computing Group) at JPL has begun using Pooch to launch parallel code on their new XServe cluster. At present, it is the largest working XServe cluster known to exist.

· Dr. Dean Dauger will be available at the Apple booth of the SuperComputing 2002 conference to discuss this result and other topics.

· Version 1.3 of Pooch has been released. Major new features include:

• Support for launching multiple tasks per computer, including automatically launching multiple tasks on multiprocessing Power Macs. This feature makes it possible for parallel applications to use one API to mix parallel computing both within a box and between boxes
• Uses OS X 10.2's new Rendezvous (a. k. a. ZeroConf) implementation in addition to Service Location Protocol (SLP) simultaneously for discovery of other nodes
• Introduces Pooch Lite, a minimal-UI version of Pooch suitable for broad installation on administered machines, such as in a student lab
• Numerous other improvements and minor bug fixes

· New parallel applications, the Fresnel Diffraction Explorer and pMrBayes, are introduced on the Pooch Download page.

· September 24-26: Presented at the Apple exihibitor booth at the IEEE Cluster Computing 2002 conference.

· Version 1.2.1 of Pooch, containing a few minor bug fixes and cosmetic improvements, has been released. See the Pooch Manual for details. An update to plaunch was also made.

· Check out page 22 of the June 2002 issue of MacWorld! Their macbeat article entitled "Strength in Numbers" highlights the 233-GFlop achievement made using 76 Power Macs at USC and what it means for parallel computing and the Macintosh platform.

Apple introduced the new XServe, which has great implications for Mac clustering.

· April 23: A presentation at the Aerospace Corporation.

The list of latest new users of Pooch include people at the Argonne National Laboratory and the MGM Las Vegas hotels. See the Users page for more.

Version 1.2 of Pooch has been released. Major new features include:

• Support for jobs compiled with other MPIs, such as mpich and MPI-Pro
• Support for Cocoa apps and other bundle-based applications
• Complete support for Unix-based executables, including Mach-O executables and Unix scripts
• Complete support for Unix-style permissions, process monitoring, and process killing
• Node registration scheduling now possible
• Lists of recently selected nodes and files can be recalled

Pooch's Canadian Tour

Dr. Dean Dauger was invited to give presentations at a series of seven educational institutions from February 26 through March 21 at the invitation of Apple Canada:

• February 26: University of British Columbia
• February 27: Simon Fraiser University
• March 4: York University
• March 5: University of Waterloo
• March 6: University of Toronto
• March 20: Université de Montréal
• March 21: Université du Québec à Montréal

Dr. Dauger was very proud to present at these notable educational institutions. Live demonstrations of parallel computing were made, including linking machines in Canada with those back at UCLA, and every demonstration was successful. (Even the snow couldn't hold them back.) Each presentation generated a great deal of discussion and excitement about the present and future of the technology. You may also view video of the presentation.

· January 29: A Wired News article that generated a lot of interest, even on Slashdot.

· January 23: A presentation at USC's Department of Aeronautical and Astonautical Engineering.

· January 15: A presentation at Arizona State University.

During Christmas break 2001, Pooch was tested on a 76-node cluster formed out of Power Macs in USC's Laungauge Arts computer lab. It successfully and reliably launched 76-node jobs in this environment, proving the scalability of Pooch and, by launching the AltiVec Fractal Carbon demo, achieved 233 billion floating-point operations per second!

· November 29: A presentation at MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

· November 28: A presentation at Harvard Medical School.

· November 27: A presentation at the Apple Boston Market Center.

· November 13, 14, & 15: Presentations at the Supercomputing 2001 Conference in Denver, Colorado.

· October 30: A presentation at EDUCAUSE 2001 Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana.

· October 19: A presentation at USC.

On October 10, 2001, IEEE Cluster 2001 awarded their "Best Commercial Exhibit - Software" prize to the "most innovative commercial software product", version 1.1 of Pooch! This award is significant because all the major players in cluster computing was at this conference, yet a committee of an IEEE conference looked beyond the Linux solutions and pointed to a Macintosh clustering product as the "most innovative".

· At this coference, Dr. Dean Dauger and Dr. Viktor Decyk presented a paper entitled Numerically-Intensive "Plug-and-Play" Parallel Computing.

Pooch is now scriptable! You may now create customized and automated queuing and launching mechanisms for parallel computing jobs using AppleScript (see Sample AppleScripts). Because AppleScripts can be written and run from X's Unix command line, you may now direct Pooch from a command line interface (see plaunch). In addition, other applications can ask Pooch to query the network and submit parallel jobs, allowing automated parallel launching, a feature of the "Computational Grid", from a Mac application. See the AltiVec Fractal Carbon demo for an example. Numerous other features and improvements to Pooch are detailed in the Pooch Manual.

· September 10: A presentation at IEEE Conference in Poland by Dr. Viktor Decyk.

· September 7: A presentation at ISSS-6 Meeting at the Max-Planck-Institüt für Extraterrestrische Physik in Garching (outside München), Germany.

· August 7 & 9: Presentations by Dr. Viktor Decyk and Dr. Dean Dauger at Apple's SummerCamp 2001 at Sheridan College in Toronto, Canada.

· April 26: Presentation by Dr. Dean Dauger at Harvey Mudd College's Computer Science department in Claremont, California.

· April 17: First release of Parallel OperatiOn and Control Heuristic Application.