[ Thanks to Michael
S. Mimoso for this link. ]
“Linux’s upsurge in popularity as a data center platform is a
natural offshoot of its proven performance in clusters, says Dean
Hutchings, chief operating officer of Linux Networx Inc., in
Bluffdale, Utah. His company is building one of the world’s largest
Linux clusters, named Lightning, for Los Alamos National
Laboratory. In this interview, he explains how clusters increase
application performance and why Linux and clusters are a good
match.“Why is Linux a good platform for
clustering?“Dean Hutchings: There are a lot of reasons
that come from its open-source background. It’s being developed by
many of the brightest developers in the world. There is a large
group developing the Linux operating system. Linux doesn’t have a
lot of the overhead that Microsoft or other operating systems might
have, [which] don’t add value when you’re using them for
high-performance computing. You’re able to use the system to do
what you want, and that’s where the power is going. Bottom line:
Price and performance is why Linux is used…”