Try this link for the "ugly" tree-like antenna. http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/projects/esg/research/antenna.htm »

I second the requests from the message posted by notinhnotien7. Unfortunately, from what I can see the list of needed knowledge is simply '*everything*' (the *'s are to to include anything I left out with the word 'everything') Pretty much everything from assembly level programming in BIOS all the way up to network administration, with all the little nitty gritty details in between. You could maybe get a simple cluster working without all that knowledge, but you'll have to learn all that stuff anyway when it breaks, or you switch out one piece of hardware like the article mentions, or you change something in the software stack, or click the left mouse button with the wrong finger, etc. You also need to be able to test every component; is the problem with node 6 a bad NIC, or a BIOS setting, or did the penguin|cat|dog chew on your ethernet cable? »