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Chapter 2 Computer Clusters. Lecture 2.1 Overview. Outline. Cluster definition and significance Cluster development trend Cluster family classification Analysis of the Top 500 Supercomputers. Definition and Significance. Definition
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Chapter 2 Computer Clusters Lecture 2.1 Overview
Outline • Cluster definition and significance • Cluster development trend • Cluster family classification • Analysis of the Top 500 Supercomputers
Definition and Significance • Definition • A Collection of interconnected stand-alone computer which can work together collectively and cooperatively as a single integrated computer resource pool • Clustering explores massive parallelism at the job level and achieves high availability though stand-alone operations
Significance • Of the top 500 supercomputers reported in 2010, 85% were computer clusters or MPPs built with homogeneous nodes. • Computer clusters have laid the foundation for today’s supercomputers, computational grids and Internet clouds build over data centers
Cluster Development Trends • Computer clustering started with the linking of large mainframe computers such as the IBM Sysplex and the SCI Origin 3000. • Subsequently, the clustering trend moved toward the networking of many minicomputers, such as Dec’s VMS cluster. • In the early 1990s, the next move was to build UNIX-based workstation clusters represented by the Berkeley NOW (network of workstations) and IBM SP2 AIX-based server cluster • Beyond 2000, we see the trend moving to the clustering x86 PC engines.
Milestone Cluster Systems • Clustering has been a hot research challenge in computer architecture. • Fast communication, • job scheduling, • SSI • HA • The following tables lists some milestone cluster research projects and commercial cluster products, each of which has contributed some unique features.
Cluster Family Classification • Based on application demand, computer clusters are divided into three classes: • Computer Clusters • High-Availability Clusters • Load-balancing Clusters
Compute Clusters • These are clusters designed mainly for collective computation over a single large job, such as large scale simulation and modeling. • The cluster typically shares a dedicated network, and the nodes are mostly homogeneous and tightly coupled. • This type of clusters is also known as a Beowulf cluster. • Beowulf cluster typically runs Linux, or other Unix-like operating systems such as BSD, and contain shared libraries. Such as Message-Passing Interface (MPI), the Beowulf cluster behaves more like a single (super)computer.
High-Availability clusters HA • (high-availability) clusters are designed to be fault-tolerant and achieve HA of services. • HA clusters operate with many redundant nodes to sustain faults or failures. They are designed to avoid all single points of failure. • Many commercial HA clusters are available for various operating systems.
Load-balancing clusters • For this type of clusters, requests initiated from the user are distributed to all node computers, which results in a balanced workload among different machines. • Middleware is needed to achieve dynamic load balancing by job or process migration among all the cluster nodes.
Analysis of the Top 500 Supercomputers • Every six months, the world’s Top 500 supercomputers are evaluated by running the Linpack Benchmark program over very large data sets. The ranking varies from year to year, similar to a competition. • We will analyze the trend of top 500 supercomputers over time from the following perspectives: • Architectural Evolution • Speed Improvement over time • Operating System Trends
Operating System Trends in the Top 500 • The five most popular operating systems have more than a 10 percent share among the Top 500 Computers in November 2010. • 410 supercomputers are using Linux with a total processor count exceeding 4.5 million. This constitutes 82 percent of the systems adopting Linux. • The IBM AIX/OS is in second place with 17 systems (a 3.4 percent share) and more than 94,288 processors. • Third place is represented by the combined use of the SLES10 with the SGI ProPack5, with 15 systems (3 percent) over 135,200 processors. • Fourth place goes to the CNK/SLES9 used by 14 systems (2.8 percent) over 1.13 million processors. • Finally, the CNL/OS was used in 10 systems (2 percent) over 178,577 processors. • The remaining 34 systems applied 13 other operating systems with a total share of only 6.8 percent.
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