Linux Magazine: High-performance computing (HPC) using clusters has come a long, long way from its early days. Back then, a cluster was a network of disparate workstations, which often sat on people’s desks, harnessed together into a Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) computation. Back then, nascent Beowulf clusters consisted of cheap tower PCs literally stacked up on shelves.

Early on, cluster computing was only being done by a tiny handful of people — usually by computer scientists who were working on building the future or by people who were doing real science (with computers) who needed the future a bit before the future was ready for them. To those pioneers, a “network” generally meant 10-Base-2 Ethernet — a daisy chain network terminated with resistors at both ends that used these nifty (and expensive) little AUI doohickeys to connect very expensive Unix workstations to RG-58 coaxial cable — or worse, a thickwire Ethernet, which used a bloodsucking device known as a “vampire tap” to make the actual connection to the wire (preferably spaced on a half-meter mark to minimize reflections) to insert a coaxial “T” connector.

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