🚀 go-pugleaf

                   HOW TO BUILD A BEOWULF: A TUTORIAL
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When:           October 21, 1997, 1:00-5:30pm
Where:          Baxter Auditorium, on the Caltech Campus
How much:       Free to the Caltech community, $75 for others.
Presented by:   The Center for Advanced Computing Research

For more info, and registration (required):
	www: http://www.cacr.caltech.edu/beowulf/
	email:  sarah@cacr.caltech.edu
	tel: (626)395-4622

Tutorial Abstract:
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Beowulf-class computers utilize cost-effective, mass-market, commodity
off-the-shelf technologies to deliver scientific and engineering
computational cycles at the lowest possible price.  They exploit a
confluence of recent trends:

- Commodity silicon technology including microprocessor performance and
memory density has improved tremendously in the last few years.
- Commodity networking, especially fast ethernet at 100 Mbs, has made it
possible to design distributed memory systems with tolerable bandwidths
and latencies.
- Free operating systems, especially Linux and FreeBSD, are available,
reliable and well-supported, and are distributed with complete source
code, encouraging the development of additional tools including
low-level drivers, parallel file systems, communication libraries, etc.
- Industry standard parallel programming environments, e.g. MPI, PVM,
and BSP, are commonplace across the spectrum of high-end supercomputers,
and are also available for and well-suited to Beowulf-class systems.

It is now possible to assemble a parallel system of up to 32 processors,
using Pentium Pro processors, each with 128MB of memory, 3GB of
secondary storage, and capable of 200Mflops per processor (peak), at a
cost of about $2000 per processor.

The Center for Advanced Computing Research at Caltech has been at the
forefront of developing and using low-cost commodity parallel systems
for scientific and engineering applications.  The goal of the tutorial
is to communicate some of that expertise to scientists and engineers
at Caltech, JPL and the broader community.  Participants will leave
with the tools and information necessary to make sound decisions about
Beowulf, including specific, detailed information about how to bring a
system on-line.  Topics will include selection of hardware components,
networking options, installation and maintenance of software,
programming techniques, and recent results and experiences at Caltech
and JPL.  Notes entitled "How to Build a Beowulf" will be distributed.


Presented by the Center for Advanced Computing Research:
  Thomas Sterling
  Paul Angelino
  Donald Becker
  Chip Chapman
  Dan Katz
  Jan Lindheim
  Dan Ridge
  John Salmon