23 Feb
2004
23 Feb
'04
7 p.m.
On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 17:40:24 -0500
Patrick Finnegan <pat(a)computer-refuge.org> wrote:
Likewise, we've seen Supercomputing go from very
centralized machines
- vector processors like the Cray-1, Astronautics ZS-1, CDC Cyber 205,
etc. - to clusters of machines such as the ever-present (typically
Linux-based) clusters of machines that are fairly symmetric and don't
have a whole lot of glue, other than shared filesystems and network
switches, between them. This stage is like the outflux of PCs in the
80s to early 90s. This also includes other things like IBM's SP-type
systems, Sequent (now IBM) NUMA-Q stuff, the Sun F6800's we've now got
at work with their "Fire Link" intereconnect, etc.
I have to disagree
here. There is an important difference between a
"Linux cluster supercomuter" and a NUMA machine like e.g. the SGI Origin
/ Onyx: A Linux cluster consists of independent, loosely coupled
machines with independent main memory, each runing it own operating
system instance. A NUMA machine consists of tight coupled compute / IO
units, runing a single operating system instance on all CPUs and a
global shared memory. Big NUMA machines are IMHO supercomuters, where
Linux PeeCee clusters are not.
--
tsch??,
Jochen
Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/