Project with laptop cluster

[TheNiceGuy66]

Hello all,

So recently I had a great idea about connecting up multiple laptops and making some sort of computer for running Minecraft servers, running programs that require CPU, and not GPU. Now I have no idea about how to connect them all up however, I wanted to be able to control them/it from my main desktop.

 

Now I plan to use 4 laptops, all completely the same (don't worry I haven't bought new ones just for this, I am using broken laptops which I have fixed). I plan to remove the motherboards from each laptop, then assemble a frame (sort of like a GPU cluster), then somehow connect them all in a way like how NVlink works on Nvidia GPU's, where one GPU controls the other but in this case, my desktop would control all 4 laptops. I am struggling to figure out how I would connect all the laptops together and then have them all connected to my desktop. This is just a project for me to do whilst still in lockdown, so If anybody could help I would be very grateful.

 

Also if you would like anymore information please ask.

 

Thanks in advance George.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Well This really depends on the software you want to use, as normally the software manages the clustering.

 

Id probalby put them in a vm cluster first. Makes it easy to make vms that are spread across the nodes, and you can do shared storage if you want. 

 

The laptops are gonna have pretty slow networking between them, so you won't be doing any fancy shared memory things, and even shared storage won't be that fast.

[TheNiceGuy66]

19 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Well This really depends on the software you want to use, as normally the software manages the clustering.

 

Id probalby put them in a vm cluster first. Makes it easy to make vms that are spread across the nodes, and you can do shared storage if you want. 

 

The laptops are gonna have pretty slow networking between them, so you won't be doing any fancy shared memory things, and even shared storage won't be that fast.

thank you for the information, i was planning to run a vm anyway using this, i just forgot to mention it. thank you