R. Zaritski: Parallel Computers

GALAXY: A Pentium-Based Cluster at MSU

Assembled: Summer 2001

June 2001, First 2 nodes:	July 2001, Cluster with 10 nodes, Front:	Back:

Budget

$25,000

Performance

Peak: 20 GFlops

Linpack benchmark: 7 GFlops (16,000 x 16,000 matrix)

Nodes

Total number of CPUs: 20
Scalability: 32 and up

	#	Processors	Mem	Disks	NIC	Size	Model
MASTER	1	2 X 1GHz Pentium III	2GB (133MHz)	2X20GB IDE, Floppy, CD-RW	Gigabit, 10/100	2U	Microway
SLAVES	9	2 X 1GHz Pentium III	256MB (133MHz)	10 GB IDE, Floppy	Gigabit	1U	Microway

Node Interconnect

Switched Gigabit Ethernet over Cat 5e/6 Copper cables (1000BaseT)

12-Port Gigabit SuperStack-3 4900 Switch from 3COM
Gigabit Ethernet Network Cards (3C996-T, one per node) from 3COM

Cabinet and Power

Standard 19'' 40U Netshelter rackmount cabinet from APC
Two 0U 9-Outlet 15A Power Distribution Units from APC
2U SmartUPS 700RM (holds Master for 9min) from APC

Operating System

Scyld Beowulf Cluster Operating System, based on Red Hat Linux 6.2, from Scyld

Master node delivers OS to all Slaves via network at boot time
Master node starts jobs and is the central point of job control

Parallel Software

MPI library

MPICH integrated as part of Scyld Beowulf OS
has Fortran, C, and C++ bindings

Parallel shell (bpsh), part of Scyld Beowulf OS

External Interface

Remote logins to the Master node
Keyboard-Video-Mouse attached to Master node

Use

Simulation of Spiral Wave Interactions in Excitable Media
Heart Modeling
Parallel Computing Research
Teaching

Benchmark Results

LINPACK: 7 GIGAFLOPS (on a 16,000 x 16,000 matrix)

NEWS

July 11, 2001: GALAXY is added to the list of top 100 world clusters at top500.org. It is rated 93rd!

June 5, 2002: The memory of the Master node is upgraded from 512MB to 2GB.

Contact: Dr. R. Zaritski