which is why separate prices per component are not provided below. This 140-node system is based on the high speed DEC Alpha processor which has a peak performance of over 1 Gflops due to its clock rate of 533 MHz and its ability to issue two floating point operations each cycle. Avalon is the 113th fastest computer in the world based on the widely cited LINPACK benchmark1, and was awarded the Gordon Bell Prize for best price-performance ratio in 1998.
Processor DEC Alpha 21164A, 533MHz
Motherboard DEC AlphaPC 164LX
Memory Generic SDRAM, 256 MBytes DIMM with ECC
Hard Disk Quantum Fireball ST3.2A, EIDE U-ATA, 3.1 GByte
Floppy Disk TEAC 1.44 MByte, $16
Network Interface Controller Kingston Fast Ethernet, 100 Mbps, with DEC "Tulip" chip set
Package Generic tower case with power supply, ATX form factor
3.9 Boxes, Shelves, Piles, and Racks
Our review of Beowulf hardware would be incomplete without some mention of the technology used to actually physically support (i.e., keep it off the floor) a Beowulf system. Packaging is an important engineering domain that can have significant influence on the cost and practical aspects of Beowulf implementation and operation. Packaging of Beowulfs has taken two paths: the minimalist "Lots of Boxes on Shelves", captured so well by the acronym of the NIH LOBOS system, and the "looks count" strategy as adopted by several projects including the Hive system at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Japanese Real World Computing Initiative. The minimalist approach was driven by more than laziness. It is certainly the most economical approach, and is remarkably reliable as well. This is due to the same economies of scale that enable the other low-cost, high-reliability subsystems in Beowulf. In the minimalist approach, individual nodes are packaged in exactly the same "towers" that are found deskside in homes and offices. These towers incorporate power supplies, fan cooling, and cabling and cost less than a
