If you loved the Xgrid project from several years ago, you’re going to like this.
Per an excellent article by AppleInsider’s Mike Wuerthele, a new project continues the efforts wherein cluster-based computing was created by connecting Macs together. The Xgrids, which worked well in extremely specific circumstances, were both corporate and federally-funded efforts with some hobbyists building their own rigs at home.
A new MLX project that uses Macs and Thunderbolt networking appears to be emerging as a much smoother reincarnation of these earlier efforts. The project uses MPI distributed computing, and utilizes one master machine and as many worker Macs as can be afforded connected directly to the master machine using Thunderbolt 4 cables. This in turn provides extremely high-speed communications between the host machine and the workers.
The worker machines themselves can be headless, with automatic login selected, Screen Sharing enabled, and networking having been configured manually.
Computational software is installed, using Open-MPI through HomeBrew. The MLX project repository is then installed next.
Beyond the software itself, a cluster of Mac Studio desktops can easily be transported in a duffle bag, and an iPad could be used as a screen. From there, up to six Apple Silicon Mac worker machines could be connected to an M1 Ultra or M2 Ultra Mac Studio host machine, or any other configuration you saw fit.
It’s a nifty project, it has a good community behind it, and it could perhaps lead to some amazing things, especially under the Apple Silicon hardware platform.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via AppleInsider, GitHub, and Open-MPI