Beowulf Supercomputer System Lee, Jung won CS843

Introduction The Beowulf Clustering computer system is one of the most powerful distributed systems in computing industry. The Beowulf Clustering computer system is now widely used in many areas. Eg. Research, NASA, etc.

A Brief Cluster History In 1994, first Beowulf clustering PC was developed at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre. It was running on 16 Intel 100Mhz based personal computer. 10Mbps Ethernet 10 Giga Flops Cost $50,000

First Beowulf Cluster Computer

Current Beowulf Cluster Supercomputer

Anatomy of a “Beowulf” “Cluster” of networked PCs –Intel Pentium Family Processors, Compaq Alpha or AMD –Switched 100Mbps or 1Gbps Fast Ethernet or Myrinet –Linux –Parallel and batch software support Switching Infrastructure n1nNn2 Front-end Node Outside World Compute Nodes

Why build Beowulf System Science and Money Some problems take lots of processing Many supercomputers are used as batch processing engines –Traditional supercomputers wasteful high throughput computing Beowulf: –“ [useful] computational cycles at the lowest possible price.” –Suited to high throughput computing –Effective at an increasingly large set of parallel problems

Three Computational Paradigms Data Parallel –Regular grid based problems Parallelising compilers, example HPF (High Performance Fortran) Example: physicists running lattice gauge calculations Message Passing –Unstructured parallel problems. MPI (Message Passing Interface), PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) Example: chemists running molecular dynamics simulations. Task Farming –“High throughput computing” - batch jobs Queuing systems Example: chemists running Gaussian.

Current Sophistication? Shrink-wrapped “solutions” or do-it-yourself –Not much more than a nicely installed network of PCs –A few kernel hacks to improve performance –No magical software for making the cluster transparent to the user –Queuing software and parallel programming software can create the appearance of a more unified machine

Compare with Ordinary Supercomputer and Beowulf-class Cluster MachineCost# Processors~ Peak Speed Cray T3E10s million Gflop/s SGI Origin s million Gflop/s IBM SP210s million512400Gflop/s Sun HPC1s million6450Gflop/s TMC CM55 Million (1992)12820Gflop/s SGI Power Challenge1 Million (1995)2020Gflop/s Beowulf cluster + myrinet1 Million256120Gflop/s Beowulf cluster + Ethernet300K256120Gflop/s

Beowulf Paradigm

The obvious, but important In the past: –Commodity processors way behind supercomputer processors –Commodity networks way, way, way behind supercomputer networks In the now: –Commodity processors only just behind supercomputer processors –Commodity networks still way, way behind supercomputer networks –More exotic networks still way behind supercomputer networks In the future: –Commodity processors will be supercomputer processors –Will the commodity networks catch up?

Hardware possibilities

Operating System Possibility Advantage Disadvantage Linux Large user community Good compiler, but only x86. Widely Available, open source Many platforms Window Good Compilers Expensive, Poor Stability Poor Remote Access Digital Unix Very Good Compiler Works on expensive Hardware

Open Source The good... –Lots of users, active development –Easy access to make your own tweaks - change kernel code. - can change management software And the bad... –There’s a lot of bad code out there!

Network technologies So many choices! –Interfaces, cables, switches, hubs; ATM, Fast Ethernet, gigabit Ethernet, firewire, Myrinet, … The important issues –latency –bandwidth –availability –price –price/performance –application type

Reliability in a large system Build it right! Is the operating system and software running ok? Is heat dissipation going to be a problem? –Monitoring daemon Normal features –CPU, network, memory, disk More exotic features –Power supply and CPU fan speeds –Motherboard and CPU temperatures Do we have any heisted-cabling? –Racks and lots of cable ties!

Conclusion Beowulf clustering system is best choice in low budget for high end computing. Beowulf cluster will be popular in various field -High performance computing fields -High performance web/mail server Beowulf cluster is continuously enhanced -New package and tools are available Beowulf cluster needs to develop software and tools for clustering -Management, device drivers, and monitoring