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The Borg, a 52-node Beowulf cluster used by the McGill University pulsar group to search for pulsations from binary pulsars
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The original Beowulf cluster built in 1994 by Thomas Sterling and Donald Becker at NASA. The cluster comprises 16 white box desktops each running a i486 DX4 processor clocked at 100 MHz, each containing a 500 MB hard disk drive, and each having 16 MB of RAM between them, leading to a total of roughly 8 GB of fixed disk storage and 256 MB of RAM shared within the cluster and a performance benchmark of 500 MFLOPS.
A Beowulf cluster is a computer cluster of what are normally identical, commodity-grade computers networked into a small local area network with libraries and programs installed which allow processing to be shared among them. The result is a high-performance parallel computing cluster from inexpensive personal computer hardware.
Beowulf originally referred to a specific computer built in 1994 by Thomas Sterling and Donald Becker at NASA.[1] They named it after the Old English epic poem, Beowulf.[2]
No particular piece of software defines a cluster as a Beowulf. Typically only free and open source software is used, both to save cost and to allow customization. Most Beowulf clusters run a Unix-like operating system, such as BSD, Linux, or Solaris. Commonly used parallel processing libraries include Message Passing Interface (MPI) and Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM). Both of these permit the programmer to divide a task among a group of networked computers, and collect the results of processing. Examples of MPI software include Open MPI or MPICH. There are additional MPI implementations available.
Beowulf systems operate worldwide, chiefly in support of scientific computing. Since 2017, every system on the Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers has used Beowulf software methods and a Linux operating system. At this level, however, most are by no means just assemblages of commodity hardware; custom design work is often required for the nodes (often blade servers), the networking and the cooling systems.
^Becker, Donald J; Sterling, Thomas; Savarese, Daniel; Dorband, John E; Ranawak, Udaya A; Packer, Charles V (1995). "BEOWULF: A parallel workstation for scientific computation". Proceedings, International Conference on Parallel Processing. 95.
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See Francis Barton Gummere's 1909 translation, reprinted (for example) in Beowulf. Translated by Francis B. Gummere. Hayes Barton Press. 1909. p. 20. ISBN 9781593773700. Retrieved 2014-01-16.[dead link]
A Beowulfcluster is a computer cluster of what are normally identical, commodity-grade computers networked into a small local area network with libraries...
very fast supercomputer. A basic approach to building a cluster is that of a Beowulfcluster which may be built with a few personal computers to produce...
that update. General-purpose computing on graphics processing units Beowulfcluster "Building Supercomputer Using Playstation 3". Console Watcher.com....
users to install a Beowulf type high performance computing cluster. TORQUE Resource Manager Maui Cluster Scheduler Beowulfcluster Official OSCAR site[dead...
2003. Retrieved February 9, 2012. "Microwulf: A Personal, Portable BeowulfCluster". Archived from the original on September 12, 2007. Retrieved February...
difficult if they are not. The most common type of cluster is the Beowulfcluster, which is a cluster implemented on multiple identical commercial off-the-shelf...
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Aiyara cluster model can be considered as a specialization of the Beowulfcluster in the sense that Aiyara is also built from commodity hardware, not...
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recommended for use with QubesOS. Free and open-source software portal Beowulfcluster LinuxBoot LOBOS Open-source hardware Rapid Boot "Releases". coreboot...
high speed communication system (Gigabit Ethernet is common). A Linux Beowulfcluster is an example of a loosely coupled system. Tightly coupled systems...
system. Becker, in collaboration with Thomas Sterling, created the Beowulfclustering software while at NASA, to connect many inexpensive PCs to solve complex...
Testbed (KLAT2) is a 64+2 node Beowulfcluster built by the University of Kentucky College of Engineering in 2000. The cluster used entirely off the shelf...
NASA project to build supercomputers out of commodity clusters. In 1995 the Beowulfcluster—a cluster built on top of a commodity network for the specific...
(COTS) PlayStation 3 clusterBeowulfcluster John E. Dorband; Josephine Palencia Raytheon; Udaya Ranawake. "Commodity Computing Clusters at Goddard Space...
programmed the original Linux bonding driver. It came into use with the Beowulfcluster patches for the Linux kernel 2.0. Modes for the Linux bonding driver...
artificial island called "Dejima" in Nagasaki. Supercomputing in Japan Beowulfcluster Hamada T. et al. (2009) A novel multiple-walk parallel algorithm for...
be executed in cluster and multicore configurations. In the cluster configuration, it can execute parallel Java applications on clusters and clouds. Here...
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OpenSCE (Open Scalable Cluster Environment) is an Open-source beowulf-clustering software suite led by Kasetsart University, Thailand. It started from...
distinguished from conventional high-performance computing systems such as cluster computing in that grid computers have each node set to perform a different...
memes usually pertain to computing or technology, such as "Imagine a Beowulfcluster of these", "But does it run Linux?", or "Netcraft now confirms: BSD...
(2000–present) Joined the BaBar Collaboration Alam worked with the Beowulfcluster class of supercomputers. He greatly enjoyed mentoring new physicists...
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The original Beowulf cluster built in 1994 by Thomas Sterling and Donald Becker at NASA. The cluster comprises 16 white box desktops each running a i486 DX4 processor clocked at 100 MHz, each containing a 500 MB hard disk drive, and each having 16 MB of RAM between them, leading to a total of roughly 8 GB of fixed disk storage and 256 MB of RAM shared within the cluster and a performance benchmark of 500 MFLOPS.