“What’s the closest thing to a high-performance
computing solution offered on Linux today? How does a Linux cluster
differ from a supercomputer?“Paul Terry: I’ll answer those questions in
reverse.“Supercomputers and most Linux systems differ in their heritage,
and as a result, in their architectures. Most Linux systems
available today began life as computers for commercial
applications–databases, information management, Web servers.
Architecturally they fall into two camps: Linux clusters, where
processors are connected through I/O links; or shared memory
machines, where processors exchange data and instructions through
shared memory…”