Collections of Workstations

This chapter discusses collections of workstations. It also presents the cluster model. The development of workstations farms as a viable multiple processor system relies on achieving the following goals: scalability, fast processing, fast networking, and reusability. The idea of scalability is that, as more workstations are added to the collection, the performance should increase accordingly. Currently, many processors are available that are fast enough to be used as either workstations or as nodes in a multiple processor system. One reason that cluster computing has not been successful is that the available networks connecting workstations are of low speed and low band-width. The term reusability is meant as layering the support for the multiple processor system on top of the workstation's own software system. The main goals in network of workstations architecture design are—network processes, layering on top of available hardware and operating systems, heterogeneous clusters, parallel input/output systems, and lowering network costs.