I am experimenting with a knowledge base hosted by a Sesame RDF store that I can put in Linux tmpfs (in RAM). I think that I can adapt the Sphinx speech recognition engine to yield its results at human speed if I distribute the work to at least 4 cores. So I was intrigued by the Microwulf project ( http://www.clustermonkey.net ) which features very inexpensive diskless compute nodes.

Presently I am configuring a test compute node, using my development system as the master. Perceus ( http://www.perceus.org ) has provisioning software for diskless clusters, and I plan to use Terracotta software ( http://www.terracotta.org/confluence/display/orgsite/Home ) to connect the Java JVMs on the compute nodes. Supposing that I simply stack the micro-ATX motherboards and power supplies on a wood rack, and cover the structure with metal window screen for EMI shielding, each compute node will cost $225, neglecting shipping and the GbE switch

  • Motherboard - MSI K9VGM-V AM2 VIA K8M890 Micro ATX $55
  • Power Supply - LOGISYS Computer PS480E12 ATX12V 480W $23
  • NIC - Intel PWLA8391GT $30
  • CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ Brisbane 2.1GHz Socket AM2 $66
  • RAM - (2) Crucial 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) $60

If you have space, the cheapest ATX case that I found was: Coolmax CV-502-Silver 11-Bay ATX Mid Tower Case $16

My prototype compute node, without a disk, has 2 cores at 2.1 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet LAN, and draws only 70 watts. The PS fan is large so the node is quiet. I think that I can stack four of these in a well-ventilated wood rack with at least a 50% space savings over ATX cases. I believe that I can get away without a KVM (Keyboard/Video/Mouse) switch after the prototype is configured; meaning that I should not need a convenient monitor on the compute node.

The motherboard socket AM2 can be upgraded next year to AMD 4-core chips. If an AGI developement team has the ability to assemble their own computers, then I think the Microwulf design is a useful alternative to enterprise-style equipment racks with expensive components.