Configuring large high-performance clusters at lightspeed: A case study

Over a decade ago, the TOP500 list was started as a way to measure supercomputers by their sustained perfor-mance on a particular linear algebra benchmark. Once re-served for the exotic machines and extremely well-funded centers and laboratories, commodity clusters now make it possible for smaller groups to deploy and use high-performance machines in their own laboratories. This pa-per describes a weekend activity where two existing 128-node commodity clusters were fused into a single 256-node cluster for the specific purpose of running the bench-mark used to rank the machines in the TOP500 supercom-puter list. The resulting metacluster sits on the Novem-ber 2002 list at position 233. A key differentiator for this cluster is that it was assembled, in terms of its software