Computer Science research done on Beowulf class systems

[Greg Lindahl]

> A few really
> large sites might need to spread the load a bit, but would probably be better
> served my multiple servers that work together than a beowulf.

Obviously we are back to "What's a beowulf?" Multiple servers that
work together is a traditional cluster. Businesses, btw, have used
clusters for as long as scientific programmers have used clusters. The
wall street firm I used to work for didn't have any machine with more
than 2 CPUs, nor did they do any parallel programing, but they had a
large cluster. They built it for availability and throughput reasons.

> A beowulf really doesn't have facilities to support really really
> large external network traffic.

But my cluster does. And, actually, even the strict definition of
"beowulf" doesn't outlaw big gateways.

So watch out for folks who use "beowulf" interchangably with "cluster".
I don't, but most of the new people asking questions on this mailing
list do.

-- g