How does a Beowulf solve problems faster?

• Parallel computers are easier to build than vector computers, but harder to program

• You can buy more processing power

  • 10 1GHz processors cheaper than a 10GHz
  • Four 1GHz DP systems cheaper than 8x1GHz SMP

• Many independent jobs run in parallel

• A single job may be broken into parts that communicate via MPI or a similar library

Notes: