These pages represent a snapshot of our work to December 1998. Much more up-to-date information
may be found on our
Windows Clusters site.
Introduction
The convergence of the high-end workstation and commodity
personal computers has been particularly rapid over the last few
years. It is now possible to build cheap, powerful
supercomputer-level machines using commodity parts at a fraction
of the cost of proprietary systems. The Beowolf initiative
has concentrated on using Intel-based machines running Linux to provide very
cost-effective production machines for a number of applications.
We have purchased a dedicated computational cluster of DEC
Alpha workstations. These compete on a node for node basis with
systems such as those from IBM and SGI/Cray for many scientific
and engineering applications, but by using commodity components
the cost is lower by a factor of at least six.
The best value for money clearly lies in this commodity
desktop PC technology. Here we can not only take advantage of
economies of scale in the corporate market, but also in the
rapidly increasing take-up of PCs in the home. Even greater
leverage can be obtained by using the DEC Alpha microprocessor.
These FORTRAN-optimised chips are priced to compete in the
Windows NT marketplace against Intel and offer good
price/performance compared Pentium-based systems. The choice of
Windows NT is partly driven by the availability of good
optimising compilers on Alphas, particularly Digital Visual
FORTRAN.
This web site is organised into the following subsections:
- Hardware, details
of our system configuration
- Windows NT, OS
discussions (including Linux)
- Compilers,
for Windows and Linux
- Networking, fast
Ethernet and other interconnect technologies
- Current Project Status,
as of 17 December 1998
-
Links, including our
publications and links to Beowolf sites and sites related
to the other subsections listed above
Commercial Applications:
PC clusters have more than academic interest. For example,
loudspeaker manufacturers Celestion
are using clusters of Windows NT PC's. This gives them
supercomputer-level resources at high-street prices and the
capability to enhance the productivity of their speaker
designers. Celestion are being assisted in this work by the
University of Southampton iT Innovation Centre.
Acknowledgements:
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council, Microsoft
Research, MPI Software
Technology Inc and 3Com for
this work.
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