BEOWULF

Beowulf. Some authors claim that Beowulf should be called only those computers built in the same way as the original NASA computer.

Summary

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  • 1 Criteria
  • 2 Development
  • 3 Classification
  • 4 Combinations
  • 5 Source

Criteria

Other, somewhat extreme, authors call any computer system running parallel code Beowulf.

However, there are authors who agree with the following definition:

“Beowulf is an architecture made up of multiple computers that can be used for parallel computing.”

Development

In 1994 under the sponsorship of the Earth and Space Sciences Project (ESS – Earth and Space Sciences) of the Center for Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS – Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences), Thomas Sterling and Don Becker created the first Beowulf cluster for research purposes.

Thomas Sterling named the project Beowulf after the hero of an English tale, who released “Danes of Heorot” from the oppressive monster Grendel. As a metaphor, Beowulf was named this new high-performance computing strategy that uses well-spread technology in the market, to defeat the oppressive costs in time and money of supercomputing.

A Beowulf system usually consists of a server node (master) and one or more client nodes (slaves), interconnected through an Ethernet network or other type of network. A Beowulf cluster is built using “well known” hardware and software components (commodities).

Classification

To establish the differences between the different types of Beowulf systems, the following classification is presented:

  • Class I. They are systems made up of computers whose components comply with the “Computer Shopper” certification test, which means that their elements are in common use, and can be purchased very easily in any distribution store.
  • Class II. They are systems made up of computers whose components do not pass the “Computer Shopper” certification test, which means that their components are not in common use and therefore cannot be found as easily as the components of systems of the previous class. Teams located in this category may have a higher level of performance than Class I.

Combinations

Beowulf clusters are typically based on well-known hardware , with an open source software (Linux) infrastructure. The nodes that make up the cluster are dedicated only to cluster tasks. Programs are written in C or Fortran, using message passing libraries to perform parallel operations.

There are some tools that allow Beowulf clusters to be installed, configured and managed automatically, such as OSCAR and NPACI Rocks. Both tools include high-performance Beowulf-type cluster computing best practices. OSCAR allows to implement Beowulf Class I clusters, while NPACI Rocks allows to implement Beowulf Class I or Class II clusters.

 

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