Beowulf is a multi-computer architecture which can be used for parallel computations. It is a system which usually consists of one server node, and one or more client nodes connected together via Ethernet or some other network. It is a system built using commodity hardware components, like any PC capable of running a Unix-like operating system, with standard Ethernet adapters, and switches. It does not contain any custom hardware components and is trivially reproducible. Beowulf also uses commodity software like the Linux or Solaris operating system, Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) and Message Passing Interface (MPI). The server node controls the whole cluster and serves files to the client nodes. It is also the cluster's console and gateway to the outside world. Large Beowulf machines might have more than one server node, and possibly other nodes dedicated to particular tasks, for example consoles or monitoring stations. In most cases client nodes in a Beowulf system are dumb, the dumber the better. Nodes are configured and controlled by the server node, and do only what they are told to do. In a disk-less client configuration, client nodes don't even know their IP address or name until the server tells them what it is.
Documents
• Engineering a Beowulf-style Compute Cluster (Online Book)
• The Beowulf HOWTO
• The Stone SouperComputer: ORNL's First Beowulf-Style Parallel Computer
• Zen and the Art of Beowulf Clusters
• Avalon: An Alpha/Linux Cluster Achieves 10 Gflops for $150k
• 构建自己的Beowulf Cluster
• Linux高性能计算集群 -- Beowulf集群
Links
• Beowulf Cluster Homepage
• Beowulf Cluster Wikipedia
|
|