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Clusters are usually deployed to improve performance and availability over that of a single computer, while typically being much more cost-effective than single computers of comparable speed or availability.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~bader/papers/ijhpca.html|title=Cluster Computing: Applications|last1=Bader|first1=David|author-link=David Bader (computer scientist)|date=May 2001|publisher=[[Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing|Georgia Tech College of Computing]]|first2=Robert|last2=Pennington|access-date=2017-02-28|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071221011621/http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~bader/papers/ijhpca.html|archive-date=2007-12-21|url-status=dead}}</ref>
Computer clusters emerged as a result of the convergence of a number of computing trends including the availability of low-cost microprocessors, high-speed networks, and software for high-performance [[distributed computing]].{{citation needed|date=October 2014}} They have a wide range of applicability and deployment, ranging from small business clusters with a handful of nodes to some of the fastest [[supercomputer]]s in the world such as [[IBM Sequoia|IBM's Sequoia]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9338651/Nuclear-weapons-supercomputer-reclaims-world-speed-record-for-US.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220112/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/9338651/Nuclear-weapons-supercomputer-reclaims-world-speed-record-for-US.html |archive-date=2022-01-12 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=Nuclear weapons supercomputer reclaims world speed record for US|publisher=The Telegraph|date=18 Jun 2012|access-date=18 Jun 2012}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Prior to the advent of clusters, single unit [[fault tolerant]] [[mainframes]] with [[Triple modular redundancy|modular redundancy]] were employed; but the lower upfront cost of clusters, and increased speed of network fabric has favoured the adoption of clusters. In contrast to high-reliability mainframes clusters are cheaper to scale out, but also have increased complexity in error handling, as in clusters error modes are not opaque to running programs.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gray |first1=Jim |last2=Rueter |first2=Andreas |title=Transaction processing : concepts and techniques |url=https://archive.org/details/transactionproce0000gray |url-access=registration |date=1993 |publisher=Morgan Kaufmann Publishers |isbn=978-1558601901}}</ref>
==Basic concepts==
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Greg Pfister has stated that clusters were not invented by any specific vendor but by customers who could not fit all their work on one computer, or needed a backup.<ref>{{cite book | last = Pfister | first = Gregory | title = In Search of Clusters | edition = 2nd | publisher = Prentice Hall PTR | ___location = Upper Saddle River, NJ | year = 1998 | page = [https://archive.org/details/insearchofcluste00pfis/page/36 36] | isbn = 978-0-13-899709-0 | url = https://archive.org/details/insearchofcluste00pfis/page/36 }}</ref> Pfister estimates the date as some time in the 1960s. The formal engineering basis of cluster computing as a means of doing parallel work of any sort was arguably invented by [[Gene Amdahl]] of [[IBM]], who in 1967 published what has come to be regarded as the seminal paper on parallel processing: [[Amdahl's Law]].
The history of early computer clusters is more or less directly tied
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.
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