Design and Construction of the Clusters for the Competition

Abstract

The history of cluster use can be dated to the middle 1990s. In recent years, cluster-based architecture has become more and more popular due to its cheap price, good flexibility, and good scalability. There are more and more cluster-based supercomputers in the Top500 list, since the first cluster entered the list in June 1997. In November 2003, there are already 208 cluster-based supercomputers in the Top500 list. In the recent 23 publications of the Top500, the top supercomputers are all based on cluster architecture. For example, the current top supercomputer is the Tianhe-2 supercomputer in Guangzhou China, designed and developed by the College of Computer, National University of Defense Technology. Therefore, the cluster is definitely the most successful system architecture in the field of high-performance computing.