[ Thanks to Russell
C Pavlicek for this link. ]
“Just three years ago, debates were raging in the technology
trade press regarding the future of Linux and open-source
computing. Would government and business be willing to host
mission-critical applications on what amounted to a shareware
operating system? Today, that question seems to have been answered
decisively: Linux is big business.”
“If Web serving tops the list of applications for which Linux
typically is deployed, high-performance computing must be the
second application niche for the operating system, especially
within the circles of governmental scientific and technological
research. For the past two years, Linux has been at the heart of
numerous government-sponsored supercomputer development efforts
throughout the United States. Collaborations involving the National
Science Foundation, the departments of Energy and Defense, leading
academic institutions and name-brand computer hardware vendors have
focused on exploiting the clustering capabilities of Linux
implemented on commodity hardware platforms.”
“The objective has been to build “supercluster” platforms
capable of doing the work of single-purpose supercomputers, but at
a fraction of the cost. According to Frank Gilfeather, director of
the High Performance Computing, Education and Research Center
(HPCERC) at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the
short-term results of this activity will boost supercomputing
capabilities for use in government and private research. And in the
longer term, he said, the collaborations will set the stage for a
new generation of low-cost, high-performance, business computing
platforms that offer scalability and manageability well surpassing
existing systems.”