Since a Beowulf cluster is an MPP system, it suits applications that can be partitioned into tasks, which can then be executed concurrently by a number of processors. These applications range from high-end, floating-point intensive scientific and engineering problems to commercial data-intensive tasks. Uses of these applications include ocean and climate modeling for prediction of temperature and precipitation, seismic analysis for oil exploration, aerodynamic simulation for motor and aircraft design, and molecular modeling for biomedical research.

Design choices for building a Beowulf cluster

Beowulf is not a special software package, new network topology, or the latest Linux kernel pack. Beowulf is a concept of clustering commodity computers to form a parallel, virtual supercomputer. You can easily build a unique Beowulf cluster from those components that you consider most appropriate. No Beowulf cluster exists that is general enough to satisfy everyone’s needs—there are numerous design choices for building a Beowulf cluster. The bottomline is that a Beowulf cluster must be built to perform your applications the best (see box "Design considerations for Beowulf clusters").

The next steps for Beowulf clusters

Beowulf-class clusters have successfully penetrated the HPC market, which has traditionally been dominated by expensive, "big iron boxes" from IBM, Cray, Silicon Graphics, and others. Beowulf clusters provide an alternative for building cost-effective, high-performance parallel computing systems.

We expect Beowulf to continue its rapid deployment to fulfill the need for technical computation. We also anticipate that more commercial parallel applications such as applications for computational finance and data mining will find their way into Beowulf clusters.

Jenwei Hsieh is a lead engineer on the Internet Infrastructure Technologies team and Cluster Development
Group at Dell. Reprinted with permission from "Dell Power Solutions"