Beowulf Cluster – A Poor Man’s Supercomputer

[摘要] In this article, I describe the development of the Beowulf cluster,a parallel computer that consists of a network of off-the-shelfpersonal computers interconnected by Ethernet and usesLinux as its operating system. This style of building parallelcomputers has become very popular as fairly high-performancecomputers can be built in a university laboratory at a reasonablecost. Eighty percent of supercomputers listed in theTOP500 list of the fastest computers in the world are clusters.

[学科分类] 社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

[关键词] Parallel computer;computer cluster;message passing interface;Beowulf competition.