| View Larger Image | How to Build a Beowulf: A Guide to the Implementation and Application of PC Clusters (Scientific and Engineering Computation) | Paperbackby Thomas Sterling (Author), Donald J. Becker (Author), Daniel F. Savarese (Author)
| List Price: | $42.00 | | Price: | $34.15 | | You Save: | $7.85 (19%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | The MIT Press | | Page Count: | 238 Pages | | Publication Date: | May 28, 1999 | | Sales Rank: | 838,641th |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Supercomputing research--the goal of which is to make computers that are ever faster and more powerful--has been at the cutting edge of computer technology since the early 1960s. Until recently, research cost in the millions of dollars, and many of the companies that originally made supercomputers are now out of business. The early supercomputers used distributed computing and parallel processing to link processors together in a single machine, often called a mainframe. Exploiting the same technology, researchers are now using off-the-shelf PCs to produce computers with supercomputer performance. It is now possible to make a supercomputer for less than $40,000. Given this new affordability, a number of universities and research laboratories are experimenting with installing such Beowulf-type systems in their facilities. This how-to guide provides step-by-step instructions for building a Beowulf-type computer, including the physical elements that make up a clustered PC computing system, the software required (most of which is freely available), and insights on how to organize the code to exploit parallelism. The book also includes a list of potential pitfalls. |
Amazon.com Review
How to Build a Beowulf covers the essentials of today's "cheap supercomputing" that is available with off-the-shelf PC hardware running Linux. Filled with advice from the experts, this book is a working guide to the essentials of planning, installing, and running a Beowulf cluster. After an introduction to Beowulf and parallel computing in general, the authors describe the advantages to and organization of a typical Beowulf setup. They next describe the basic PC hardware (which will be familiar to many Intel users). The do-it-yourself impulse in Beowulf supercomputing is strong, and the authors show how to choose everything from a CPU and memory to networking options (including TCP/IP basics and Fast Ethernet). They cover hardware and software installation and the basics of configuring Linux on Beowulf nodes (which do the work of parallel processing). Next the book covers issues of security and system administration of a Beowulf cluster. (Here the authors strike a balance between accessibility and security with the concept of a "guarded Beowulf.") They cover a variety of Linux utilities for remote computing and administration. An essential piece of Beowulf technology is the Message Passing Interface (MPI), a set of APIs that permit programmers to develop parallel programs in C/C++ and FORTRAN. With MPI, programs running on different CPUs can pass messages and share the same data. The samples that round out this book are excellent--a ray-tracing example, a parallel sorting algorithm, and a cellular automata program. The authors do a good job of explaining the issues of taking advantage of parallelism within Beowulf software. --Richard Dragan |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 2.5 based on 13 reviews)
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Useless in 1999, a total waste of money in 2005 by Ripped Off (Izmir, Turkey)  1 Stars
January 09, 2005
As most other readers have elaborated, the book has little or no real substantive material concerning the actual building of a beowulf. Everyone knows Myrinet is better than gigabit ethernet, bu HOW MUCH better for a given class of problems? For any problem???
The book does not even consider addressing real issues and configuration choices, but babbles with obvious choices like ssh vs rsh etc, for pages and pages. I feel I was ripped off. These guys seem to be just resting on their laurels and apparently it doesn't seem to bother them that they are giving the intended audience of the book no real value whatsoever. I believe they should either research the matter thoroughly and completely rewrite the book, or just withdraw it from circulation. One can get orders of magnitude more relevant and reliable information just by reading HOWTOs and Googling around.
I just wish I had read the other reviews BEFORE buying the book.
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Broad introduction to PC clusters by Daniel Mall (San Gabriel, CA United States)  3 Stars
November 16, 2002
A "Beowulf" is the concept of using a network of low cost personal computers for distributed processing. The book doesn't specify a particular configuration. The author describes the three fundamental parts of a Beowulf system: node hardware, network hardware, and parallel software applications. Three chapters explain how to use the message passing interface (MPI) standard to distribute the work for a program executing on multiple nodes. An example MPI program for sorting is presented. The features of the Linux operating system are covered in Chapter 4 since Linux is a common choice for Beowulf clusters.
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excellent resource for building a beowulf  5 Stars
December 06, 2001
Before I purchased this book I was completely intimidated by the idea of building a Beowulf Cluster. I found this book to be a surprisingly thorough and accessible resource, allowing me to get a great understanding of what was needed. I've just placed my order for the equipment for my first cluster and can't wait to get it up and running!
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I still can't build a beowulf. by Bill Sherman (Ohio) 1 Stars
May 02, 2001
I have had bad experiences with cluster books before, this one is no exception. There's no how to in here, just a bunch of lecture. For mega nerds only, average computer people need not apply.
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beowulf book aimed at people who know nothing == bad joke by Britton Leo Kerin (Fairbanks, Alaska) 1 Stars
June 22, 2000
The other reviewers are right, this is a genuinely pathetic book that you should not even consider buying.This book might be worthwhile if you are starting more or less from scratch and know next to nothing about linux, computers, or networks, but if that's the case your first step should be to hire someone who knows, and they won't want this book. it pontificates in general terms about a number or obvious issues without explaining explicitly how to tackle any of the multitude of configuration issues that come up.
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