SGI, the company formerly known as Silicon Graphics Inc, has underscored its new-found focus on the Linux operating system by promising to install the company’s first 128-processor Linux cluster at the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC). The cluster consists of 32 servers, each running four 500MHz Pentium III Xeon processors, pre-loaded with Red Hat Linux 6.0. SGI’s decision to dump its Cray and NT businesses (CI No 3,723) has left the troubled giant much freer to sell Linux, both as an alternative to Windows NT in the file and print server market and as a clustered competitor to expensive supercomputers.
There is one caveat: Beowulf clusters only work in certain supercomputing applications, those vulnerable to parallel decomposing, where the problem can be broken up into parts and each processor in the cluster can work on a single part. Weather simulation and problems in fluid dynamics are too complex for parallel decomposition, but for cracking encryption algorithms, it’s a natural. The point is that for what they’re good at, Beowulf clusters are orders of magnitude cheaper than, oh, say a Cray. The OSC intends to make its SGI Linux cluster available to the rest of the state’s research community through its OARnet network.
