Is it possible to interconnect several PC together to work as 1 PC i.e How can you make parallel computer ?

Question

To combine four PC's together to work as 1.
Is it possible what parts are needed and how to ?

Answer 1

It's possible, certainly, but it's not exactly easy. I assume you're not talking about creating a simple LAN, but are rather talking about some implementation of clustering or grid technology (cycle scavenging etc.)

How you do it is going to depend on what OSs and computers you're using. For OSS environments (*NIX), have a look at Beowulf clustering (the perenniel /. favourite)

You can create programmes that utilise the Grid method (for example Seti@home) by using open source examples such as BOINC (yes, stupid name). But that's if you're only looking to synchronise a single task across multiple computers.

The problem with grid technology and such is the difficulty in coding parallel apps to take advantage of the distributed resources. What exactly are you going to be using this for? If you think you're going quadruple your gaming experience by clustering four boxes, you're mistaken - there isn't any game on the market that has the technology to truly take advantage of even the cutting edge quad-core processors, let alone quad-clusters. This sort of thing lends itself to heavy graphics processing, or heavy math work.

Answer 2

what you need is a hub to connect all 4 pcs to each other.
you need a lan card on all four pcs to connect to the hub
you need 4 STP cables that would fit in the Rj 45 port of the lan cards and the hub. a hub might turn out to be an expensive affair.

if u dont want to go for the hub you need 6 lan cards
you might put two lan cards in 2 pcs and one lan card in 2 pcs and connect thm with stp cable in the following manner:

1--2--2--1
i have never tried it out but theoritically it should work.

Answer 3

You could network all four PCs using wireless cards and an access point or network cables. This works if you want to access information from all of the PCs, such as documents, music,etc. Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Some applications like 3D Sdutio Max, can use multiple computers across a network to help with graphics processing.

Answer 5

Well, there's networking. Click Start>Help & Support for more info.

With networking, you can share files between computers. Sometimes even monitor and/or control them.