LinuxHPC.org/Cluster Builder 1.3

Beowulf

Beowulf is a design for high-performance parallel computing clusters on inexpensive personal computer hardware. Originally developed by Donald Becker at NASA, Beowulf systems are now deployed worldwide, chiefly in support of scientific computing.

A Beowulf cluster is a group of usually identical PC computers running a FOSS Unix-like operating system, such as Linux or BSD. They are networked into a small TCP/IP LAN, and have libraries and programs installed which allow processing to be shared among them.

There is no particular piece of software that defines a cluster as a Beowulf. Commonly used parallel processing libraries include MPI (Message Passing Interface) and PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine). Both of these permit the programmer to divide a task among a group of networked computers, and recollect the results of processing.
The name comes from the main character in the Old English epic Beowulf.

Integration

Presently, there are a number of different Linux distributions that are designed for building Beowulf clusters. These include:

ClusterKnoppix (based on Knoppix)
dyne:bolic (geared towards multimedia production)
Rocks Cluster Distribution
Scyld
DragonFly BSD

A cluster can be set up by using Knoppix bootable CDs in combination with OpenMosix. The computers will automatically link together, without need for complex configurations, to form a Beowulf cluster utilizing all CPUs and RAM in the cluster. This type of system is scalable to a nearly unlimited number of computers.

^{_{All text used in this article is
available under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from
the Wikipedia article "Beowulf Computing".}}