philosipical question

[Douglas Eadline]

On Fri, 14 Jul 2000, Fredrik Augustsson wrote:

> 'morning! I have a philosophical question for all of you. 
> 
> When does a Beowulf class cluster stop being a Beowulf class cluster?
> 
> If I build a cluster using commodity hw but use a high performance
> network, like myrinet or SCI, is it still a Beowulf? 
> 
> + hamlet 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Beowulf mailing list
> Beowulf at beowulf.org
> http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
> 

I always defer to the definition given in the "how to Build a
Beowulf" book by Sterling, et al

"A Beowulf is a collection of personal computers (PCs) interconnected by
widely available networking technology running any one of several
open-source Unix-like operating systems."

I think this is very workable definition with enough "wiggle words"
("personal computers", "widely available") to allow for many
variations on the idea.

The definition is rather concise about operating system requirements. 


Doug
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