| Introduction |
A Beowulf is a high-performance, massively parallel computer that performs similarly to a
supercomputer for a fraction of the price. The computer is made up of a cluster of
nodes connected by a high-speed network that perform intense computing tasks. The system
is connected to the external world through a single head node.
The Beowulf cluster at Florida Tech is a 48-node
IBM system, comprised of 47 compute nodes and 1 head node.
For more information about the Beowulf Project, see
www.beowulf.org and the
FAQs.
The Florida Tech Beowulf system was funded by the National Science Foundation
major Research Implementation grant. Each computer node has a motherboard that will support 2 processor chips and more memory. At a later expansion (system software upgrading in progress), the FIT Beowulf will become a 96 processor supercomputer.
| Hardware |
The configuration of
each of the 47 compute nodes is:
The head node configuration is:
Among the shared resources are:
Other hardware resources:
| Software |
The Beowulf software environment is implemented in Red Hat Linux with Portland Group compilers added and tuned for the IBM processors.