Series Foreword

Computing is one of the fastest changing areas of technology. Keeping up with these changes is hard, making the practical use of the most advanced algorithms, technology, and methods difficult. The Scientific and Engineering Computation series focuses on rapid advances in computing technologies, with the aim of facilitating transfer of these technologies to applications in science and engineering. It includes books on theories, methods, and original applications in such areas as parallel computing, large-scale simulations, and scientific software.

The series is intended to help scientists and engineers understand the current world of advanced computation and to anticipate future developments that will affect their computing environments and open up new capabilities and modes of computation.

This volume in the series describes the highly successful distributed/parallel system called Beowulf. A Beowulf is a cluster of PCs interconnected by network technology and employing the message-passing model for parallel computation. Key advantages of this approach are high performance for low price, system scalability, and rapid adjustment to new technological advances.

This book covers how to build, program, and operate a Beowulf system based on the Linux operating system. The second edition is a complete update of the book, with new material in every chapter and several new chapters on cluster setup, management, and programming.

Beowulf hardware, operating system software, programming approaches and libraries, and machine management software are all covered here. The book can be used as a textbook as well as a practical guide for designing, implementing, and operating a Beowulf for those in science and industry who need a powerful system but are reluctant to purchase an expensive massively parallel processor or vector computer.

William Gropp and Ewing Lusk, Editors

Janusz Kowalik, Founding Editor