[Beowulf] Beowulf communication type of nodes

[Lux, Jim (337C)]

Why not...
Does it use "commodity hardware"   - sounds like you do
Does it use "commodity software" - XP, for good or bad, is certainly commodity
(there are those that would maintain that a Beowulf must use open source, but I think that's not a defining case)

The question you might want to ask is whether there is some concept of "multiple machines working as a whole".  How is what you're doing different from a fileserver and a bunch of independent computers.  I think, because you have a master assigning work, it fits in the cluster bucket.  What really distinguishes most cluster computing is the concept of interprocess communication (between nodes) as part of the computational task.  Whether that's done by "messages on Ethernet" or "files" is more a matter of detail, than concept.
People run Embarassingly Parallel applications on Beowulf clusters all the time.

Is a "render farm" a Beowulf?


Jim Lux

From: Beowulf [mailto:beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org] On Behalf Of Nathan Pimental
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 8:04 AM
To: beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: [Beowulf] Beowulf communication type of nodes

Could one consider a cluster a beowulf if the nodes obtained their instructions from a hard drive, in a specific location? Or would this be another type of cluster? I have a shared drive, and the master node doles out DLL Libraries (Yes, it's neccisary the system be on windows XP) to the slave nodes, which execute functions in the DLLs. The results are returned as files.
Thanks!
Nathan
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