ARK

It is now possible for a small research group to assemble a parallel system of up to 138 processors, using Pentium II (350MHz) processors, each with 256 Mbytes of memory, 100 Gbytes of disk, and capable of 50 Mflops per processor (peak), at a cost of less than \95,000 per processor, including the interconnection network, RAID and backup device.

Hardware

ARC is configured as one front-end system and 69 compute nodes.

Each of the 69 nodes in the system has:

• Motherboard with Intel 440BX chipset and Dual Pentium II (350MHz) processor
• 256 MB PC100 SDRAM memory
• RAID disk (25 GB x 6) system
• 100 Mbit/s ethernet adapter

In addition, 100 Mb/s full duplex 80-port Fast Ethernet switches with 24 Gbit/s backplane.

Software

• Debian GNU/Linux
• MPI-ch or PVM for message passing
• MPI is the de-facto standard for fast message passing in MPP systems.
• Compilers for Gnu C, C++ and Fortran (g77)

Misc.

• How does ARK perform ?