“David HM Spector credits his lifelong fascination with
supercomputers to the “spinning tape drives and blinky lights” of
the 1960s science fiction computers of his childhood. He grew up to
be deeply immersed in computer technology during the dawning of the
Internet, when its potential, like that of clusters today, was just
beginning to hit the computer world.”
“Spector’s first Linux cluster, and ultimately his new book
Building Linux Clusters, arose from his need for an affordable home
supercomputer for his research. Building it was a challenge. “I
noticed that a lot of people talk about it, but the documentation
is really terse. There’s no way for someone to start who doesn’t
have all the knowledge already.” Spector wrote up an outline and
realized it would make a great O’Reilly book. And, as it turned
out, O’Reilly & Associates was looking for just such a
book.”
“Building Linux Clusters is a hands-on guide for people new to
clusters. “Like most O’Reilly books,” said Spector, “it’s to get
people going. You can build a cluster right out of the box: You pop
the CD in, follow the instructions, and in ten or twenty minutes
you have a fully functional cluster.”