How to Build a Beowulf: A Guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters

by Thomas Sterling, John Salmon, Donald J. Becker

Supercomputing research--the goal of which is to make computers that are ever faster and more powerful--has been at the cutting edge of computer technology since the early 1960s. Until recently, research cost in the millions of dollars, and many of the companies that originally made supercomputers are now out of business. The early supercomputers used distributed computing and parallel processing to link processors together in a single machine, often called a mainframe. Exploiting the same technology, researchers are now using off-the-shelf PCs to produce computers with supercomputer performance. It is now possible to make a supercomputer for less than $40,000. Given this new affordability, a number of universities and research laboratories are experimenting with installing such Beowulf-type systems in their facilities. This how-to guide provides step-by-step instructions for building a Beowulf-type computer, including the physical elements that make up a clustered PC computing system, the software required (most of which is freely available), and insights on how to organize the code to exploit parallelism. The book also includes a list of potential pitfalls.

262 pages, Paperback

First published May 13, 1999

About the author

Dr. Thomas Sterling is a Professor of Computer Science at Louisiana State University, a Faculty Associate at California Institute of Technology, a CSRI Fellow for Sandia National Laboraties, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D as a Hertz Fellow from MIT in 1984. He is probably best known as the father of Beowulf clusters and for his research on Petaflops computing architecture. His current research is focused on the ParalleX execution model and its practical implementation in computer architecture and programming methods. Professor Sterling is the co-author of six books and holds six patents. He was awarded the Gordon Bell Prize with collaborators in 1997.