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Beowulf Cluster Computing with Linux, 2nd Edition (Scientific and Engineering Computation)
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by William Gropp, Ewing Lusk, Thomas Sterling, and Jon "maddog" Hall
Sales Rank: 836207
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List Price: $45.00
$36.52
At Amazon
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Paperback: 660 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press; 2 edition December 1, 2003
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0262692929
ISBN-13: 978-0262692922
Product Dimensions:
9 x 7.9 x 1.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
Product Description
Use of Beowulf clusters (collections of off-the-shelf commodity computers programmed to act in concert, resulting in supercomputer performance at a fraction of the cost) has spread far and wide in the computational science community. Many application groups are assembling and operating their own "private supercomputers" rather than relying on centralized computing centers. Such clusters are used in climate modeling, computational biology, astrophysics, and materials science, as well as non-traditional areas such as financial modeling and entertainment. Much of this new popularity can be attributed to the growth of the open-source movement.
The second edition of Beowulf Cluster Computing with Linux has been completely updated; all three stand-alone sections have important new material. The introductory material in the first part now includes a new chapter giving an overview of the book and background on cluster-specific issues, including why and how to choose a cluster, as well as new chapters on cluster initialization systems (including ROCKS and OSCAR) and on network setup and tuning. The information on parallel programming in the second part now includes chapters on basic parallel programming and available libraries and programs for clusters. The third and largest part of the book, which describes software infrastructure and tools for managing cluster resources, has new material on cluster management and on the Scyld system.
About The Author
William Gropp is Associate Division Director and Senior Computer Scientist, MCS Division, at Argonne National Laboratory.
Ewing Lusk is Senior Computer Scientist, MCS Division, both at Argonne National Laboratory.
Thomas Sterling is a Professor of Computer Science at Louisiana State University, a Faculty Associate at California Institute of Technology, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Customer Reviews & Comments
This second edition covers a large range of cluster topics. Firstly, in terms of why you might need a Beowulf. Then, how to assemble the hardware. And how to install linux on the nodes. The book is valuable not least because it encapsulates decades of knowledge about running clusters, not just of the Beowulf type. The chapters' authors hail from places like Argonne and Oak Ridge National Labs, where there have been research groups using many different types of clusters for years. Aside from linux, the book describes the special purpose parallel language called MPI. It can be accessed from a C, C++ or Fortran program. Note this choice of languages. Typically the cluster is meant for intensive computational use, with UI issues a low priority. So the book focuses on those languages, and not how to hook Java or C# to MPI. Of course, with each chapter written by a different author, there is somewhat of a discontinuity between chapters. Think of the book as more akin to a conference proceedings writeup.
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Beowulf Cluster Computing with Linux, 2nd Edition (Scientific and Engineering Computation)
List Price: $45.00
Available from Amazon
Price: $36.52
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