We are experimenting clusters of commodity processors to fit specific computational requirements. Extensive experimentation on such architectures has been carried on in the last periods giving precise indications about the reliability and feasibility of these systems and their price/performance ratio. Researchers at Democritos currently exploit the two different Linux Cluster adopting two different paradigms: the Beowulf approach for high performance parallel applications and the openMosix approach for high throughput serial codes (see computing facilities for more details on the hardware). We are keeping on experimentation on both the operative ways.

1. Evaluating/testing new hardware products
   We are periodically testing and giving feedback on specific architecture provided by vendors.
   
   
2. Integrating openMosix with openAFS
   In collaboration with ICTP we are currently working to fully integrate the openMosix cluster technology with the AFS distributed filesystem used in the ICTP production environment.
   
   
3. Benchmarking I/O solutions
   We are currently testing available solutions for I/O in cluster computing environments. Our aim is to measure I/O performance data in order to identify and implement the best solutions for our specific I/O requirements within our research center. The benchmark work is not based upon abstract workloads, but rather on real scientific production workloads used on a daily basis. We are currently playing with GPFS/PVFS/oMFS filesystems.
   
   
4. Testing IA-64 version of the openMosix projects
   The openMosix project provided the center with two Itanium workstation where to test the IA-64 porting of the openMosix patch. We are currently performing such a test.
   
   
5. Actively contributing to the openMosix userspace tools
   Moreno Baricevic contributes to the development of some openMosix tools (mps, mtop, mosmon) and he's the author of the ompsinfo utility.