Linux On Steroids: DIY supercomputer software from Sandia

[Faustine]

Lots of interesting possibilities for cryptographic applications, I'm 
sure...

Massively Parallel Computational Research Laboratory
http://www.cs.sandia.gov/

Linux On Steroids
By Jason Levitt

You can salivate over the fastest computers in the world by browsing 
http://www.top500.org, or you can build your own. Sandia National 
Laboratories, which conducts research under the auspices of the Department 
of Energy, has released Cplant open-source software for building Linux 
supercomputing clusters. 

-->The 50 Mbytes of source code is available free to those who want to 
build a supercomputer using off-the-shelf hardware.<--

Cplant is designed to link PCs running Linux to create highly scalable, 
parallel computing clusters typically used for intensive number-crunching 
required by activities such as seismic research and economic forecasting.

Building your own Linux cluster capable of supercomputer-class computing 
still will cost thousands, but by using conventional PCs running Linux, a 
Cplant cluster will be several orders of magnitude cheaper than a Sun 
E10000 Starfire, a Fujitsu VPP5000, or any other name-brand supercomputer 
or proprietary clustering system. 

"Our systems are roughly four times cheaper for the same Linpack number," 
says Neil Pundit, department manager of scalable computer systems at 
Sandia, in Albuquerque, N.M. Linpack is a benchmark program widely used to 
rate the basic computational performance of supercomputers. A 1,000-node 
Cplant cluster ranked 31st last year on the http://www.top500.org site with 
a Linpack number of 512 gigaflops. The Cplant software can be downloaded at 
http://www.sandia.gov. 

Sandia's Linux cluster, Antarctica, is one of the largest and most powerful 
in the world, with 1,500 rack-mounted Compaq 1U servers, each with a 466-
MHz Alpha CPU and 256 Mbytes of RAM. 

The machines are interconnected using Myricom Inc.'s Myrinet gigabit 
clustering hardware, which is widely used for clustering and is sold by 18 
of the 20 largest computer companies. The Cplant software requires you to 
use Myricom's clustering hardware, which roughly doubles the cost of 
hardware for each Linux system but is a key component of Cplant's fast 
internode communication. 

Sandia uses Antarctica to simulate physical phenomena such as the effects 
of radioactive materials as well as for weather forecasting.