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Article: When does a cluster become greater than the sum of its parts? The hunt for the right commodity interconnect.(high performance computing)
- Article from:
- Scientific Computing & Instrumentation
- Article date:
- August 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Advantage Business Media. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Acluster of workstations may reach the vaunted classification of "supercomputer" when you can run tightly coupled calculations over the distributed resources. This amalgamation of separate stations can only be achieved by a high performance network called an interconnect.
The interconnect is the cardiovascular system for the supercomputer and is one of the last proprietary parts used in filese high performance systems that are, for the most part, composed of off-the-shelf components. The hunt for a commodity interconnect has remained elusive. Past interconnects have proven to he both costly and of mediocre performance, with a few shining stars. Current ...