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General Purpose Computer:
A computer designed to perform, or that is capable of performing, in a
reasonably efficient manner, the functions required by both scientific and
business applications.
The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS)
Supercomputer:
A very fast and powerful computer, outperforming most mainframes, and used
for intensive calculation, scientific simulations, animated graphics, and other
work that requires sophisticated and high-powered computing.
ComputerUser.com
General Purpose Parallel Processing Computer:
A computer designed to provide general support for parallel programming so as to be able to meet the parallel processing
requirment of both scientific and business applications. General purpose parallel processing computers will, in general,
exhibit the characteristics of supercomputers. However, supercomputers may not be general purpose parallel processing computers, for example
those that focus their hardware support on array processing.
Working Definition
Beowulf Cluster:
A Beowulf class cluster computer is distinguished from a Network of Workstations
by several subtle but significant characteristics. First, the nodes in the
cluster are dedicated to the cluster. This helps ease load balancing problems,
because the performance of individual nodes are not subject to external factors.
Also, since the interconnection network is isolated from the external network,
the network load is determined only by the application being run on the cluster.
This eases the problems associated with unpredictable latency in NOWs. All the
nodes in the cluster are within the administrative jurisdiction of the cluster.
For examples, the interconnection network for the cluster is not visible from the
outside world so the only authentication needed between processors is for system integrity.
On a NOW, one must be concerned about network security. Another example is the Beowulf software
that provides a global process ID. This enables a mechanism for a process on one node to send
signals to a process on another node of the system, all within the user domain.
This is not allowed on a NOW. Finally, operating system parameters can be tuned to improve performance.
For example, a workstation should be tuned to provide the best interactive feel
(instantaneous responses, short buffers, etc), but in cluster the nodes can be tuned to provide
better throughput for coarser-grain jobs because they are not interacting directly with users.
Beowulf Introduction & Overview
Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS)
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