Session K6 - PC Clusters for Computational Science Theory and Practice.
INVITED session, Wednesday morning, March 22
103AB, MCC
The idea of building a 'supercomputer' by connecting many workstations or PCs using a fast network is clearly attractive for several reasons. The cost of such a cluster computer can be an order of magnitude cheaper than a traditional multiprocessor machine while providing the same computational power. Workstation clusters can also be grown over time by simply adding more machines. It is often difficult to efficiently use the computational power of any multiprocessor system due to the limited interprocessor communication rate. It is even more difficult for cluster computers where the bandwidth is lower and the latency higher than for traditional MPP systems. This talk will compare the performance of many applications having different computational and communication characteristics on a wide variety of MPP systems and cluster computers. These include a Cray T3E, an Intel Paragon, SGI SMP systems, and clusters of PCs connected by Fast Ethernet, an Alpha cluster connected by Gigabit Ethernet, and a cluster of dual-processor IBM Power3 systems connected by Gigabit Ethernet. The applications used for this analysis cover a broad range as far as how demanding they are on the communication system. They include classical and tight-binding molecular dynamics codes, an ab initio plane wave program, and a finite difference electromagnetic wave propagation code. This talk will conclude with a discussion of the work that is being done to overcome some of the current limitations of cluster computers.