Abstract:
Summary form only given. It is observed that once you've finally made it to the North Pole, no matter what direction your next step takes, you can't go anywhere but South...Show MoreMetadata
Abstract:
Summary form only given. It is observed that once you've finally made it to the North Pole, no matter what direction your next step takes, you can't go anywhere but South. To some, it appears that Commodity Cluster computing is in somewhat of a similar position. Having firmly established itself as the leading approach to scalable high performance computing, commodity clusters such as Beowulf-class systems have no where to go. Yes, they will continue to track Moore's exponential growth in peak performance and storage capacity, and system software will become incrementally better But in terms of strategic advances, commodity clusters are largely corralled in a paradigm cul-de-sac. In some sense there is a kind of truth in this assessment: the fundamental premise of commodity clustering is invariant; Existing, i.e. predeveloped and standalone, systems (uninformatively referred to as "nodes") are integrated by means of a commercially available interconnect network and supporting software. However the flaw of this defeatist perspective is that the nodes look like more of the same, only faster The future of commodity cluster computing will be defined, not solely by Moore's Law, but by the revolutionary structures embodied by the nodes and the innovative ways in which they will be employed. This plenary presentation will explore the innovations in both hardware and software that are likely to drive the future of commodity cluster computing throughout the rest of this decade and toward the trans-Petaflops performance regime of performance. In so doing, we will examine current projections of device technology to anticipate the performance, capacity, power, size, and cost curves of future commodity clusters. Perhaps of more impact are the changes anticipated in hardware architecture including blade technology, system and SMP on a chip, processor in memory architecture, and anticipated advances in networking including Infiniband and optical switching. As new uses are found for...
Date of Conference: 26-26 September 2002
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 06 January 2003
ISBN Information: