A web site for the Beowulf project may be found at http://www.beowulf.org.

The Beowulf Project was started at CESDIS, which is operated for NASA by USRA in early 1994. In the summer of 1994 the first Beowulf 16 node cluster was constructed for the Earth and Space Sciences project, (ESS), at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). The project quickly spread to other NASA sites, other R&D labs and to universities around the world. The project's scope and the number of Beowulf installations have grown over the years.

There are about 100 clusters listed on the Beowulf home page. Within the MILC collaboration, we have access to five clusters at our universities.

Gandhi was one of the first supporters of Linux!

What are some advantages of clusters?

• Commodity hardware (Intel, AMD, Alpha(?), FastEthernet, Myrinet(?))
• Commodity software (Linux, MPICH)
• Programmability, Flexibility
• Community of users and developers
• Short design time; can take advantage of many developments