Subject: Re: Beowolf cluster
From: Craig Callender (craigc@corith.com)
Date: Tue Mar 19 2002 - 17:50:11 AKST
The good/bad thing about this list:
1. THere is always someone out there that know more about a topic than
you.
-- Craig C.
On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Christopher E. Brown wrote:
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 17:18:16 -0700 (MST)
From: Christopher E. Brown <cbrown@woods.net>
To: Craig Callender <craigc@corith.com>
Cc: Adam Elkins <LinuxRobot@yahoo.com>, aklug@aklug.org
Subject: Re: Beowolf cluster
On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Craig Callender wrote:
>
> A Beowulf cluster practices distributed processing. Rather than having 24
> CPUs in one computer, you have 24 computers all networked together and you
> have a couple masters that tell the slaves what to do. That's the jist of
> it. I believe Slashdot had some articles on them, if you search through
> the older stuff.
Specificly Beowulf defines tightly clustered group of machines
featuring one or more private network interconnects, constructed out
of commodity hardware, managed and connected to the outside world by
one (rarely 2) control stations, and running a free OS, usually Linux
or Free/Net/Open BSD.
This is as opposed to the PoPCs or NoW models of commodity computing.
(Pile Of PCs, stack em up, slap em on a network)
(Network of Workstations, everyones desktops)
PoPCs and NoW systems often run the same software and extensions as a
Beo, but for most tasks the performance is an order of mag different.
Kinda like building a car out of whatever is lying in the yard, and
getting one built by an F1 racing team. They are both a car, but...
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and
null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of
IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there
be registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they
carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called
the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was
evening and there was morning, one interrupt.
-- Rico Tudor, "The Story of Creation or, The Myth of Urk"
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