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History_of_Cluster

History of cluster

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2 views

History_of_Cluster

History of cluster

Uploaded by

niravdholiya07
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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History

 The history of cluster computing can be traced back to the early days of computing, but it
gained significant traction in the late 20th century with the advent of powerful yet affordable
commodity hardware and advancements in networking technology. Here's a brief overview of
the key milestones in the history of cluster computing:

1. Early Parallel Computing:

 Parallel computing, the concept of dividing tasks among multiple processors to speed
up computations, dates back to the 1950s and 1960s. Early supercomputers, such as
the Control Data Corporation (CDC) 6600, employed parallel processing techniques.
However, these systems were expensive and primarily used for scientific and military
applications.

2. Beowulf Clusters:

 The modern era of cluster computing began in the mid-1990s with the development
of Beowulf clusters. Beowulf clusters were pioneered by researchers at NASA and
the Los Alamos National Laboratory. They used off-the-shelf commodity hardware,
typically x86-based PCs, interconnected via Ethernet or other networking
technologies. These clusters were initially built for scientific computing tasks and
were named after the Old English epic poem "Beowulf."

3. Message Passing Interface (MPI):

 MPI emerged as a standard communication protocol for parallel computing in the


early 1990s. It provided a framework for coordinating communication between nodes
in a cluster, enabling distributed computing applications to be written efficiently.

4. Open Source Software:

 The Beowulf project popularized the use of open-source software in cluster


computing. Tools like the Linux operating system, Beowulf software stack, and
parallel computing libraries became widely adopted, lowering the barrier to entry for
building and deploying clusters.

5. Growth in High-Performance Computing (HPC):


 Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, cluster computing gained prominence in
the high-performance computing (HPC) community. Clusters powered by thousands
of interconnected nodes became capable of rivaling the performance of traditional
supercomputers at a fraction of the cost.

6. Grid Computing and Cloud Computing:

 Cluster computing concepts influenced the development of grid computing and later
cloud computing paradigms. Grid computing aimed to federate geographically
distributed resources into a single virtualized infrastructure, while cloud computing
provided on-demand access to scalable and elastic computing resources over the
internet.

7. Modern Applications:

 Cluster computing has become ubiquitous across various industries and applications.
It powers scientific research, financial modeling, big data analytics, machine learning,
and more. Modern clusters leverage a combination of CPUs, GPUs, and specialized
accelerators to achieve unparalleled performance and scalability.

Overall, the history of cluster computing reflects a continuous evolution driven by advancements in
hardware, software, and networking technologies, as well as the growing demand for scalable and
cost-effective computing solutions.

 Greg Pfister has stated that clusters were not invented by any specific vendor but by
customers who could not fit all their work on one computer, or needed a backup.

 The first commodity clustering product was ARC net(Attached Resource computer network),
developed by Datapoint in 1997.

 The next product was VAX cluster released by DEC in 1980's.

 Microsoft, sun microsystems, and other leading hardware and software companies offer
clustering packages.

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