Comparative system performance for a Beowulf cluster

  • Authors:

  • Ralph D. Meeker

  • Affiliations:

  • Benedictine University, Lisle, IL

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

A Beowulf cluster is a multiple-instruction-multiple-data multiprocessor built from low-cost, off-the-shelf personal computers connected in a local area network and using free open-source operating system software to achieve supercomputer performance. System performance of a 16-processor cluster running the standard HPL Linpack benchmark is compared to performance running the molecular dynamics program NAMD as the number of processors used for the calculations increases from one to 16. System performance increases linearly for both applications, with NAMD achieving 76% of the performance of the HPL Linpack benchmark.