| | | | | | 3.8.1 Intel Pentium II Based Node | | | | | | | | | The majority of Beowulfs over four generations of systems in the last five years have employed microprocessors from Intel or, to a lesser extent, their clones from AMD or Cyrix. This is because they have been among the least expensive systems to build, the system architectures are open providing a wealth of component choices, and the Linux operating system was first available on them. While not the fastest processors in peak performance, their overall capability has been good and their price/performance ratios excellent. The most recent microprocessors in this family and their motherboards support clock speeds of 450 MHz. | | | | | | | | | The node described here represents the most recent additions to the Naegling (Beowulf's sword) system at Caltech's Center for Advanced Computing Research. This system contains a mix of Pentium Pro and Pentium II nodes and in the Fall of 1997 was one of the first to demonstrate greater than 10 Gflops sustained performance. The Pentium Pro nodes operate at 200 MHz while the Pentium II nodes run at a variety of clock speeds. This is a common feature of Beowulf systems that grow by incremental expansion over a period of multiple technology generations. | | | |  | | | | | Processor Intel Pentium II, 450 MHz, $650 | | | | | | | | | Motherboard Intel SE440BX, $142 | | | | | | | | | Memory Generic SDRAM, 100 MHz, 128MBytes DIMM without ECC, quantity 3, $175 each | | | | | | | | | Hard Disk Western Digital ''Caviar", AC38400, 8.4GByte, 5400rpm, 9.5 msec seek, 33.3 MByte per second, EIDE interface, $186 | | | | | | | | | Floppy Disk TEAC 1.44MByte, $16 | | | | | | | | | Network Interface Controller D Link, DFE-500, Fast Ethernet, 100 Mbps $30 | | | | | | | | | Video Card Trident 9680, 1 MByte, PCI, $15 | | | | | | | | | Package Generic tower case with power supply and cables, ATX form factor, $72 | | | | | | | | | 3.8.2 DEC Alpha Based Node | | | | | | | | | The second example is representative of a new direction in Beowulf technology. Assembled at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Avalon's nodes were assembled by a system-integrator before being shipped to the laboratory for $1701 per node | | | | |
