Beowulf parallel processing for dynamic load-balancing

The Beowulf parallel-processing architecture is a public-domain software technology developed by NASA to link COTS processors yielding supercomputer performance (10 Gflops) very economically (under $150 K). This paper describes our implementation of a Beowulf cluster comprising 18 Sun workstations and the Linux operating system. We describe and demonstrate ParaSort, a distributed, parallel, data-allocation-sorting algorithm with automatic distributed load-balancing, and fault-tolerant performance. The load-balancing feature can provide dynamic, on-board, adaptive optimal distribution of processing tasks across a heterogeneous network of computing devices. Furthermore, it can intelligently allocate processing to off-board resources as appropriate and as they become available. We analyze the strengths and weaknesses of Beowulf and describe future extensions of our work