"Last time we started to review just how to go about building a serious cluster computer, beginning with a fairly complete discussion of the space, power, and cooling requirements for a cluster. If you read that column, you will recall that a lot of design decisions for the cluster's future space depend (unsurprisingly) on the kind of hardware you plan to put into it. Shelved tower units, rack mount single, dual, and even quad processor systems, and bladed computers all require very different amounts of physical space, electrical power per square foot of floor space, cooling per cubic foot of room volume.
"Of course the reverse is true as well; if your room is predetermined to be the old broom closet down the hall and you only got that by threatening to hit someone with a blunt instrument, then your hardware design decisions will be heavily influenced by your available space and desired computational capacity (which for all true cluster computing fiends is always 'as much as I can get, and then some')..."
