[Beowulf] What's the category of Beowulf among Clusters?

[Eric Liang]

Hi all,
     Clusters, Grids, MPPs, MPI, OpenMP, HA, LB, GPGPU, FPGA, SMP, NUMA,
SSE etc..
     These abbreviations and terms almost cram my head, so I have to
redvelop and re-index them in my memory(brain).

     As a newbie, when I read the articles in wikipekia, I got confused.
     In the segment Cluster categorizations
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cluster#Cluster_categorizations>
of the article about Cluster
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_cluster>, there're three classes:
High-avaiablity clusters, Load-balancing clusters and Grid
computing(?!). While in the article about Parallel computing
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_programming#Classes_of_parallel_computers>
, both "Cluster computing" and "Grid computing" are the subclasses of
"Distribute computing" ,and the third one is "Massive parallel
processing ". IMHO, the latter category is more reasonable(right or not?) .
     However, since there are too many cluster software products, how
can I categorize Beowulf like clusters( loosely coupled, use MPI)? or
what's the category of Beowulf like clusters?

     Thanks in advance for any suggestions from your knowledge.

Eric

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 260 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://www.scyld.com/pipermail/beowulf/attachments/20081219/71c5cec6/signature.bin