There was this nice article a couple of years back on the “Limulus” project http://limulus.basement-supercomputing.com/ that gave some details on the construction of a commodity cluster. The only mention of software in the article pretty much said that we would have to wait until they figured it out. We never heard any more about it and the web site doesn’t give us any clue either.

Using Panasas Direct Flow on all clients for the large HPC environment. Could not survive without it.

HPC Linux clusters are a the most important tool for our core business regarding depth imaging etc. Could not have done it without
HPC. Thx to Linux and the Beowulf concept we are more than capable to do the work.

Biggest issues now are power, cooling and space.

Beowulf is absolutely alive and kicking. Totally agree with the article writer on that.

Note : I am very new to this field ..pl correct if am thinking the other way ..

I think that the very first Beowulf mini supercomputer was built by Max Gilliland of Denelco of Denver, which was the Heterogeneous Element Processor (HEP) with PDP/11′s 50 CPUs stacked up in a metal box. This was built in early 1970s. (I mention of this fact though I recognize Tom Sterling’s first naming of Beowulf computer in 2001 .)

BTW, Max designed the world largest hybrid computer at Beckman Instrument Co., a decade before of this, which was used by Boeing engineers to design space shuttle, and by M.I.T. scientist to simulate Armstrong’s lunar landing, and by me at Mobil Oil for extraction of Shale oil from Shale rock out of Rocky mountains.

I introduced this technology to NEC, which then produced The Earth Simulator with US$350 million and four tennis court size air conditioned room. This was to simulate environment of the entire earth with the use of real-life climate data from satellites and ocean buoys. Japanese scientists have already completed a forecast of global ocean temperatures for the next 50 years, and a full set of climate predictions was ready by the end of 2002. “Soon, instead of speculating about the possible environmental impact of, say, the Kyoto accord, policymakers will be able to plug its parameters into the virtual Earth, then skip ahead 1,000 years to get a handle on what effect those policies might have. That kind of concrete data could revolutionize environmental science. By digitally cloning the Earth, we might just be able to save it.” (TIME.com, “Best Inventions, 2002”) This Earth Simulator was once the world fastest supercomputer, as the TIME magazine hailed.

Alas, a recent Japanese newspaper reported that NEC decided to terminate their supercomputer business. Therefore, I was very glad to read your article saying that the Beowulf mini supercomputer has now 82% market share. This in turn may mean that “Super computer in a single metal box is DEAD!!”

When the HEP concept was initiated in early 1970s, I had another idea of spreading CPUs around the world and interconnecting them via data telecom network (i.e., ARPANET at that time, which can be Internet nowadays) — see and .

Best, Tak Utsumi