LJ: Beowulf, Super Computer for the "Poor" Approach
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Posted by Kenneth Farmer, Thursday March 14 2002 @ 01:28PM EST
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Most super computers in the world are built on the concept of parallel processing--high-speed computer power is achieved by pulling the power from each individual computer. Made by IBM, "Deep Blue", the super computer that played chess with the world champion Garry Kasprov, was a computer cluster that consisted of several hundreds of RS6000s. In fact, many big time Hollywood movie animation companies, such as Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, use computer clusters extensively for rendering (a process to translate all the information such as color, movement, physical properties, etc., into a single frame of picture).
In the past, a super computer was an expensive deluxe item that only few universities or research centers could afford. Started at NASA, Beowulf is a project of building clusters with "off-the-shelf" hardware (e.g., Pentium PCs) running Linux at a very low cost.
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