DHPC Talk DHPCT-038
Building Beowulfs for High Peformance Computing
Duncan Grove
Archived: 8 July 1999
Presented at Adelaide University, June 1999; and
Conference of Australian Linux Users, July 9-11 1999,
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
Abstract
Recently, there has been a substantial amount of interest in Beowulf
clusters. A Beowulf cluster is typified by a networked collection of
commercial off the shelf PCs running a Unix-like operating system and
software for batch and parallel computation. Although Beowulfs are
significantly less sophisticated than most people imagine them to be,
they do provide a means of harnessing large amounts of computational
power with a far better price/performance than high performance
computing solutions from traditional vendors. This talk will take a
brief look at the history of cluster computing, the beginnings of the
Beowulf Project, and the state of the art today. The focus will be the
experiences and lessons learned from building several experimental
Beowulf clusters, with a preview of a "production" Beowulf cluster
currently being built. A hands-on presentation style will be adopted,
taking a tour of the hardware and software components and techniques
used to build such systems. Some early performance results will be
presented and compared with other machines to highlight the relevance
of the Beowulf approach.
Powerpoint version of the slides
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