With Tiger, Apple introduced Dashboard and Xgrid. Dashboard the eye candy, Xgrid the geek candy. No way these two would ever meet... Well, they did! And it is a perfect match. What better widget for a Dashboard than a speedometer? This one is very special, though. It will allow you to monitor the size and speed of a large cluster of Macs connected via Xgrid to perform large calculations on biochemical models, a project called Xgrid@Stanford. You don't even have to join to see it all. How many GHz right now? How many computers working? How many processors churning numbers? If you join, you will also be able to check the status of your computer and if it is performing any work for the project, as indicated by a fast pulsing green light. If all computers around the world could join hands...
The Xgrid@Stanford widget gives realtime status information about the world's largest Xgrid cluster. And with little effort and our Xgrid widget SDK, the widget can be easily adapted to any other Xgrid cluster as well. It is a great way to advertise the power of Xgrid, and to show the people around you what greater good you are contributing to while their Mac is just dissipating energy when they sit idle... | Download >>
3rd generation
We proudly announce the 3rd generation of the Xgrid widget. By now especially Charles has turned into a true Javascript guru and he has rewritten many of the internal workings of the widget. If you are a widget programmer be sure to check its code for many goodies. But also for those who love the previous Xgrid widget there's much new to like in this latest version. What to think of the status indicator, you can now immediately see if your mac is actively contributing (green), waiting for a job (yellow), or doesn't do much (red). In the latter case we of course urge you to join the cluster! Another big addition to the 3rd generation Xgrid widget is the possibility to choose from 3 different layouts, besides the classic one, we have added two other cool looks. And if you want to further customize the widget you can even create your own skin. If you do, then we would certainly like to see it! Enjoy the all new Xgrid@Stanford widget!
Screenshots
Introducing the widget
When MacOSX 10.4 Tiger was announced at WWDC2004, Apple organized a widget contest and asked developers to create in three days a cool widget to showcase the brand new dashboard. In january that year, the advanced computation group at Apple had introduced another cool technology called Xgrid, which allowed people to start their own seti at home projects with almost zero configuration. Immediately we thought of connecting both technologies for the contest. With Xgrid came a cool screensaver in the form of a tachometer (see screenshot) that allowed you to monitor the Xgrid cluster you were contributing to. Wouldn't it be cool if that tachometer would be only an F12 away in the dashboard?! Unfortunately Apple engineers told us that there was no way to do this using the APIs available at that time, and we quickly decided to do something else. We came up with Tigergotchi, our little Tiger friend, that ended 3rd in the contest, as we found out later. However, the idea of a cool Xgrid widget we never lost..
Charles@Stanford
Back home, the idea of an Xgrid monitor widget kept going through our heads and we decided to search the internet for possibilities. That's when we hit the page of Charles Parnot, who runs one of the largests public Xgrid clusters in the world: Xgrid@Stanford. Charles had managed to display the status of his cluster on this webpage, exactly what we needed for our widget, that's how we came in touch. Charles was immediately enthusiastic about the widget idea, however he too had experienced the lack of access to the cluster status for developers, and he had created his own hack for his website. To change this situation we decided to create a demo widget for his cluster and make a feature request to Apple for a Xgrid widget and more open developer APIs in the final release of Tiger (click here to read).
Tiger extinction & resurrection
Unfortunately Apple had different ideas and wanted simplify/lighten Xgrid as much as possible in the final release of Tiger. Xgrid has been reduced to a simple checkbox in the sharing panel, and there is nothing the agent knows about the status of the cluster it is contributing to. As a result also our beloved screensaver had disappeared! However, we were not planning to give up so easily...
Today we introduce the Xgrid@Stanford widget. Out of the box it shows you the current status of Charles Parnot's Xgrid@Stanford cluster, but it can be easily changed to work with any cluster using the Xgrid Widget SDK. The widget shows the current aggregated cluster speed, the total number of active or inactive agents or processors, the percentage of working agents, etc. And using a little trick (see sidebar), it even brings back the lost tachometer screensaver! | Download Now >>
Your own Xgrid monitor widget
To make our Xgrid@Stanford widget work with any other Xgrid cluster requires only a two steps. Charles has developed a little command line application that taps into the Xgrid server and posts its status on your website as an XML file at regular interval (see our xml file as an example). Next one has to only change one line of code in the widget, it now has to get the status xml file from your server. That is all there is to create your own fancy xgrid widget for you as an administrator or for your contributers. The gridstatus commandline application and detailed instructions are bundled in a freely downloadable SDK. Of course you can also change the artwork to reflect your xgrid cluster, if you would like to use our original Photoshop files as a starting point feel free to contact us. If you have created your own widget using our SDK, we would be delighted if you would send us a copy. | Download Xgrid widget SDK >>
New in this version:
Indicator of xgrid client status
Skins, different looks
Strongly improved codebase
Xgrid@Stanford
Charles Parnot works at the Molecular and Cellular Physiology department of Stanford University. He uses xgrid to run large calculations for his research on the beta 2 adrenergic receptor to better understand its role in determining heart rhythm. Charles invites everyone to join his cluster and help science go fast forward.
We were happy to hear that a number of people have used our Xgrid Widget SDK (see left) to make a custom widget for their own Xgrid cluster. The following teams have created their own Xgrid widget:
Wesleyan University, USA
MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science, USA
University of Dortmund, Germany
Aston University, UK
Czech Academy of Sciences
AppMac Distributed Computing Project
Also the BioTeam has made a dashboard widget to monitor the status of the Sun GridEngine that ships with their INquiry software product.
What is Xgrid?
Xgrid turns a group of Macs (agents) into a supercomputer, so they can work on problems greater than each individually could solve. Xgrid uses zero configuration Bonjour to automatically set up and configure a cluster. An easy-to-use System Preference panel lets you control how your machine gets used by the network, and also tells the cluster which computer can send problems to the group for number crunching. Xgrid takes the grunt work out of splitting jobs and collecting results. Xgrid brings the power of a cluster without the hassle of setup. Kind of like having your own seti at home.
One of the coolest features of the Xgrid developer previews, the tachometer screensaver, disappeared in Tiger. Now it returns. Download one of the two free screensavers below and select the Xgrid@Stanford widget as the one to show when it is invoked. And using the Xgrid widget SDK you can create a screensaver to monitor your own Xgrid cluster as well.
If you have any question about the Xgrid@stanford widget, or if you encounter any problems, don't hesitate to contact us by email. Also, all suggestions and/or comments are more than welcome!
Download Widget
FAQ
With Tiger, Apple introduced Dashboard and Xgrid. Dashboard the eye candy, Xgrid the geek candy. No way these two would ever meet... Well, they did! And it is a perfect match. What better widget for a Dashboard than a speedometer? This one is very special, though. It will allow you to monitor the size and speed of a large cluster of Macs connected via Xgrid to perform large calculations on biochemical models, a project called Xgrid@Stanford. You don't even have to join to see it all. How many GHz right now? How many computers working? How many processors churning numbers? If you join, you will also be able to check the status of your computer and if it is performing any work for the project, as indicated by a fast pulsing green light. If all computers around the world could join hands...
We proudly announce the 3rd generation of the Xgrid widget. By now especially Charles has turned into a true Javascript guru and he has rewritten many of the internal workings of the widget. If you are a widget programmer be sure to check its code for many goodies. But also for those who love the previous Xgrid widget there's much new to like in this latest version. What to think of the status indicator, you can now immediately see if your mac is actively contributing (green), waiting for a job (yellow), or doesn't do much (red). In the latter case we of course urge you to join the cluster! Another big addition to the 3rd generation Xgrid widget is the possibility to choose from 3 different layouts, besides the classic one, we have added two other cool looks. And if you want to further customize the widget you can even create your own skin. If you do, then we would certainly like to see it! Enjoy the all new Xgrid@Stanford widget!
Back home, the idea of an Xgrid monitor widget kept going through our heads and we decided to search the internet for possibilities. That's when we hit the page of Charles Parnot, who runs one of the largests public Xgrid clusters in the world: Xgrid@Stanford. Charles had managed to display the status of his cluster on this webpage, exactly what we needed for our widget, that's how we came in touch. Charles was immediately enthusiastic about the widget idea, however he too had experienced the lack of access to the cluster status for developers, and he had created his own hack for his website. To change this situation we decided to create a demo widget for his cluster and make a feature request to Apple for a Xgrid widget and more open developer APIs in the final release of Tiger (click here to read).
To make our Xgrid@Stanford widget work with any other Xgrid cluster requires only a two steps. Charles has developed a little command line application that taps into the Xgrid server and posts its status on your website as an XML file at regular interval (see our xml file as an example). Next one has to only change one line of code in the widget, it now has to get the status xml file from your server. That is all there is to create your own fancy xgrid widget for you as an administrator or for your contributers. The gridstatus commandline application and detailed instructions are bundled in a freely downloadable SDK. Of course you can also change the artwork to reflect your xgrid cluster, if you would like to use our original Photoshop files as a starting point feel free to contact us. If you have created your own widget using our SDK, we would be delighted if you would send us a copy. | Download Xgrid widget SDK >>
Charles Parnot works at the Molecular and Cellular Physiology department of Stanford University. He uses xgrid to run large calculations for his research on the beta 2 adrenergic receptor to better understand its role in determining heart rhythm. Charles invites everyone to join his cluster and help science go fast forward.
Xgrid turns a group of Macs (agents) into a supercomputer, so they can work on problems greater than each individually could solve. Xgrid uses zero configuration Bonjour to automatically set up and configure a cluster. An easy-to-use System Preference panel lets you control how your machine gets used by the network, and also tells the cluster which computer can send problems to the group for number crunching. Xgrid takes the grunt work out of splitting jobs and collecting results. Xgrid brings the power of a cluster without the hassle of setup. Kind of like having your own seti at home.
One of the coolest features of the Xgrid developer previews, the tachometer screensaver, disappeared in Tiger. Now it returns. Download one of the two free screensavers below and select the Xgrid@Stanford widget as the one to show when it is invoked. And using the Xgrid widget SDK you can create a screensaver to monitor your own Xgrid cluster as well.