Computer cluster: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:20, 19 September 2021

Revision as of 22:41, 3 November 2021

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The first production system designed as a cluster was the Burroughs [[B5700]] in the mid-1960s. This allowed up to four computers, each with either one or two processors, to be tightly coupled to a common disk storage subsystem in order to distribute the workload. Unlike standard multiprocessor systems, each computer could be restarted without disrupting overall operation.

The first commercial loosely coupled clustering product was [[Datapoint|Datapoint Corporation's]] "Attached Resource Computer" (ARC) system, developed in 1977, and using [[ARCnet]] as the cluster interface. Clustering per se did not really take off until [[Digital Equipment Corporation]] released their [[VAXcluster]] product in 1984 for the [[VAX/OpenVMS|VMS]] operating system (now named as OpenVMS). The ARC and VAXcluster products not only supported parallel computing, but also shared [[file system]]s and [[peripheral]] devices. The idea was to provide the advantages of parallel processing, while maintaining data reliability and uniqueness. Two other noteworthy early commercial clusters were the [[Tandem Computers|''Tandem Himalayan'']] (a circa 1994 high-availability product) and the ''IBM S/390 Parallel Sysplex'' (also circa 1994, primarily for business use).

Within the same time frame, while computer clusters used parallelism outside the computer on a commodity network, [[supercomputer]]s began to use them within the same computer. Following the success of the [[CDC 6600]] in 1964, the [[Cray 1]] was delivered in 1976, and introduced internal parallelism via [[vector processor|vector processing]].<ref name=Hill41 >{{cite book|title=Readings in computer architecture|first1=Mark Donald|last1=Hill|author-link2=Norman Jouppi|first2=Norman Paul|last2=Jouppi|first3=Gurindar|last3=Sohi|year=1999|isbn=978-1-55860-539-8|pages=41–48}}</ref> While early supercomputers excluded clusters and relied on [[shared memory architecture|shared memory]], in time some of the fastest supercomputers (e.g. the [[K computer]]) relied on cluster architectures.