Massively parallel computing using commodity components

✍ Scribed by Ron Brightwell; Lee Ann Fisk; David S Greenberg; Tramm Hudson; Mike Levenhagen; Arthur B Maccabe; Rolf Riesen

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 437 KB
• Volume: 26
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-8191
• DOI: 10.1016/s0167-8191(99)00104-0

✦ Synopsis

The Computational Plant (Cplant) project at Sandia National Laboratories is developing a large-scale, massively parallel computing resource from a cluster of commodity computing and networking components. We are combining the bene®ts of commodity cluster computing with our expertise in designing, developing, using, and maintaining large-scale, massively parallel processing (MPP) machines. In this paper, we present the design goals of the cluster and an approach to developing a commodity-based computational resource capable of delivering performance comparable to production-level MPP machines. We provide a description of the hardware components of a 96-node Phase I prototype machine and discuss the experiences with the prototype that led to the hardware choices for a 400-node Phase II production machine. We give a detailed description of the management and runtime software components of the cluster and oer computational performance data as well as performance measurements of functions that are critical to the management of large systems.