What are the scalability advantages of Linux clusters?
Pitcher: The scalability advantages of clusters have been widely publicized. It is no accident that more than half of the 20 fastest computers in the world are clusters. Unlike other architectures, clusters scale naturally. And with switches from interconnect vendors now reaching well more than 200 ports in a single switch chassis, the scalability is enhanced even further. Is the Top 500 listing a real measure of HPC systems’ abilities? Doesn’t it just test total processing power and not application performance and system efficiency? Does it have other shortcomings or strengths? Pitcher: No standard benchmark is capable of predicting application performance on the wide variety of HPC codes that exist. Linpack measures a certain important subset of a system’s overall performance profile. Linpack benchmark tests correlate well with the performance of some HPC applications, and poorly with others. Other benchmarks capture a different, and in some cases a more holistic, subset of a system’
