Beowulf is the name given to a cluster of computers interconnected by network technology (10bT or 100bT) running the Linux operating system and employing the message passing method for parallel computation. There are a number of advantages to this system.

1) High performance for a low cost ( $28K compared to $1 million for a Cray)

2) System scalability

3) Rapid adjustment to new technology.

Indeed low cost and high scalability are the most impressive features of this system. unlike multiprocessor on a single board machines the performance of the Beowulf cluster grows linearly with the number of nodes added.

Our lab recently purchased a Beowulf cluster from www.xtreme-machines.com. The cluster consists of

8 x Dual Pentium2 400 Mhz nodes
256Mb Ram per node
9 gig ultra2 SCSI disk in node0
6 gig Ultra IDE disks in node 1-7
1 x KVM switch
1 x BayAreaNetworks FastEthernet Switch
1 x APCC power switch
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Total cost ~ $28K
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Performance for such a cluster is typically > 1.5 GFlops (We haven't measured it yet)

Below you can see a picture of our cluster

We shall be using this cluster mainly for finite difference time domain (FDTD) calculations as well as 3 dimensional LC modeling computations.

Below are a number of links for people interested in implementing such a system for themselves.

You can purchase a complete system from here: www.xtreme-machines.com

The Beowulf Project

Beowulf-underground.org for the latest news and software