Parallel and Distributed System Design Laboratory
Funded by NSF grant EIA 0130806, PI
The hardware of the Laboratory consists of a 16-node Beowulf cluster, and three general purpose
workstations. Each node of the Beowulf cluster is similar to an off-the-shelf PC, without a monitor
or keyboard. The components of each node include a motherboard with 1.7 GHZ Pentium 4, 512 MB with
ECC RDRAM, PC box, 100 Mb/s Ethernet adapter, 40 Gb EIDE disk drive, and video card ATI rage fury
PRO (32 Mb). The nodes are networked by 100 Mbit Fast Ethernet lines. Each node is connected to a
single 1 Gbit switch, acting as a crossbar. One of the nodes, called the front-end, interfaces with the
Department network, and so has a second Ethernet adapter for that purpose. This node also has a monitor
and keyboard, allowing an operator to monitor and debug the cluster. Each of the nodes runs the Linux
RedHat 8.0 OS and Windows/NT OS. The cluster’s basic design is shown below.
Research Projects
Parallel System for Ecological Modeling
Java Runtime System for Parallel Execution of Multithreaded Java Application
Optimal Configuration Selection for Accuracy Enhancement of Programmable Machines
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