Beowulf. Name for a class of virtual supercomputer created by linking numerous PCs through network connections into a single high-performance unit based on inexpensive, x86-based hardware and publicly available software, such as some versions of UNIX. This clustering
technique can provide performance comparable to a traditional supercomputer at approximately 10 percent of the cost. The first Beowulf cluster was assembled at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in 1994.
IBM demonstrates Linux servers matching supercomputer speeds
By Ed Scannell InfoWorld Electric
Trying to burnish its engineering image as well as demonstrate the technical possibilities of Linux, IBM slapped together an “open-source supercomputer’” at Linux World Expo last week built around a cluster of Pentium II Xeon chips.
Using a subset of the Beowulf clustering technology, 17 of IBM’s Netfinity servers containing 36 Pentium II chips and running an off-the-shelf copy of Linux matched the scalability and performance of a Cray supercomputer. The IBM system executed a computer graphics-rendering application called the PovRay benchmark.
The PovRay benchmark is intended to serve as a guide for the relative mathematical performance of a wide variety of chips, systems, and compilers. It is a ray-tracing image-rendering application by which a picture or image can be inserted in a movie such as Toy Story or Antz and subsequently be rendered with all shadows and rays of light appearing as they would fall relative to that picture or image.
“It is a big computational job. Ten years ago it would have taken a [Digital Equipment] VAX [minicomputer] 10 or 15minutes to do. A Cray can do it in three seconds today,” said Tom Figgatt, IBM’s e-business segment manager, in Somers, N.Y.
During the demonstration, IBM’s Linux-based supercomputer matched the current benchmark record of three seconds that was set by the Cray T3t-900-AC64, which had previously surpassed the second fastest time of 9 seconds.
The message IBM was trying to convey to users is that Linux has some innate capabilities for linking together parallel computers working in clusters — not just working, but working robustly using existing hardware and software available off the shelf or on the Web.
“I think we showed how easily Linux clusters together and allows you to link multiple systems readily so you can spread your workload across multiple systems,” Figgatt said.
In addition to the 17 servers, IBM used a 100MB Ethernet network and hub to connect the servers, and a piece of parallel computing software to ensure the system’s computations all connected. As for the copy of Red Hat’s Linux, IBM purchased it at a local Barnes & Noble bookstore the day before the demonstration
The advantage of the IBM-based system over the Cray, of course, is its more attractive price performance, company officials said. The Netfinity/Linux benchmark was done on approximately $150,000 worth of equipment; the cost of the Cray used was $5.5 million, they said.
IBM also used the demonstration to flex the muscles of its X-architecture features and capabilities, which now are included in all of the company’s servers up to the mainframe-class machines. For example, during one of the rendering demonstrations IBM took one of the servers offline. The screen performing the rendering missed several pixels during the fail-over but had filled them in by the time the rendering was complete.