Computer cluster: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 12:32, 26 September 2006

Revision as of 12:39, 26 September 2006

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The [[TOP500]] organization's semiannual list of the 500 fastest computers usually includes many clusters. TOP500 is a collaboration between the [[University of Mannheim]], the [[University of Tennessee]], and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center at [[Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory]]. As of August 2006, the top [[supercomputer]] is the [[Department of Energy]]'s [[BlueGene/L]] system with performance of 280.6 TFlops. The second place is owned by another BlueGene/L system with performance of 91.29 TFlops.

Clustering can provide significant performance benefits versus price. The [[System X]] supercomputer at [[Virginia Tech]], the 28th most powerful supercomputer on Earth as of June 2006[http://www.top500.org/list/2006/06/100], is a 12.25 TFlops computer cluster of 1100 [[Apple Computer|Apple]] [[XServe]] [[PowerPC 970|G5]] 2.3 GHz dual-processor machines (4 GB RAM, 80 GB SATA HD) running [[Mac OS X]]. The cluster initially consisted of [[Power Macintosh G5|Power Mac G5s]]; the XServe'srack-mountable XServes are smallerdenser than desktop Macs, reducing the aggregate size of the cluster. The total cost of the previous Power Mac system was $5.2 million, a tenth of the cost of slower [[mainframe]] supercomputers. (The Power Mac G5s were sold off.)

The central concept of a [[Beowulf (computing)|Beowulf]] cluster is the use of [[commercial off-the-shelf]] computers to produce a cost-effective alternative to a traditional supercomputer. One project that took this to an extreme was the [[Stone Soupercomputer]].