'Beowulf cluster' for high-performance computing tasks at the university: a very profitable investment

Abstract

We describe a high performance/low price "computer cluster" named Beowulf Cluster. This kind of device was initially developed by T. Sterling and D. Becker (N.A.S.A.) and it is a kind of cluster built primarily out of commodity hardware components, running an OSS (Open Source Software) operating system like Linux or FreeBSD, interconnected by a private high-speed network, dedicated to running high-performance computing tasks. We will show several advantages of such a device, among them we can mention very high performance-price ratio, easy scalability, recycling possibilities of the hardware components and guarantee of usability/upgradeability in the medium and long-term future. All these advantage make it specially suitable for the university environment and, thus, we make a description about the implementation of the Beowulf Cluster using commodity equipment dedicated to run high-performance computing tasks at our university focusing on the different areas of application of this device that range from production of high quality multimedia content to applications in numerical simulation in engineering.