| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
| Contents | ||
A computer cluster is a group of connected computers that work together as a unit. One of the more popular implementations is a cluster with nodes running Linux as the OS and free software to implement the parallelism. This configuration is often referred to as a Beowulf cluster. Sun Microsystems has also released a clustering product called Grid engine. OpenSSI is another clustering project that provides single-system image capabilities. It leverages HP's NonStop Clusters for Unixware technology and other open source technology to provide a full, highly reliable SSI environment for Linux.
There are fundamentally four types of clusters:
All mature (or highly available) cluster implementations attempt to eliminate single points of failure. Director-based clusters and Beowulf clusters are typically implemented for performance reasons, while two-node clusters are typically implemented for fault-tolerance.
A cluster of computers is referred to as a server farm when the computers are used to mimic the operations of a single server machine.
An organization publishes the 500 fastest clusters twice a year. Top 500 is a collaboration between the University of Mannheim, the University of Tennessee, and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratorySan Francisco Bay. The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory LBNL , formerly the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory and usually shortened to Berkeley Lab is a U. Department of Energy national laboratory in Berkeley, California conducting unclass. The current top supercomputer is the Department of Energy's BlueGene/L system with performance of 70.72 TFlops beating out number 2 by over 18 TFlops.
Clustering can provide significant performance benefits versus price. The System XBig Mac (supercomputer) System X (telephony) is also the name of a telephone switching platform from Marconi plc System X is a supercomputer assembled by Virginia Tech in the summer of 2003, comprising 1,100 Apple PowerMac G5 computers. The supercomputer' supercomputer at Virginia Tech, the third most powerful supercomputer on Earth as of November 2003, is a computer cluster of 1100 Apple Power Macintosh G5s running Mac OS X. The total cost of the system is $5.2 million, a tenth of the cost of slower mainframe supercomputers. The Power Mac G5s have now been replaced with Apple's Xserve G5 machines, which are smaller, reducing the size of the cluster. The Xserves still run Mac OS X. The Power Mac G5s were sold off.
The central concept of a Beowulf cluster is using COTS machines to produce a cost-effective alternative to a traditional supercomputer.