High Performance Cluster Computing (HPCC) is one of Dell´s initiatives that help customers achieve their intensive computing requirements. Unlike Virtualization, typically HPCC is a set of servers working together to appear as one server. The primary components of an HPCC solution are the servers, the network (typically Gigabit Ethernet,10 Gigabit Ethernet, Myrinet and Infiniband), storage, and the software to manage the cluster.

The traditional set of applications for HPCC are primarily scientific focused applications. For example, aerodynamic analysis, hurricane predictions,astronomic simulations, etc. But this definition of HPCC applications is rapidly changing. One of the fastest growing application areas for HPCC is in the field of bioinformatics. There are also HPCC applications that cover database mining, analysis of the voting records of the supreme court, and other fields that have traditional have not been considered HPCC. However, these areas are taking advantage of HPCC.

HPCC is one of the best examples of Dell´s scalable enterprise strategy, because customers could start with required servers and grow as they need it.

HPCC Links

Here are a number of links to help you with your HPCC technical quest:

Dell / HPCC	Main HPCC Page on Dell.com
Nov '07 Top 500 HPCC	24 Dell Clusters on the list
HPCC Overview - Podcast	Dell Experts Discuss HPCC

Here are some useful links for HPC related news sites, blogs, and otherwise useful URLs:

HPCWire
InsideHPC
Clustermonkey
Scalability
HPCCommunity
Lead, Follow, or...
Computing at Scale

Dell also has a blog about HPCC located here:

Dell HPCC Blog

Hopefully it provides some useful information about using your HPCC systems.

More detailed topic links

Top 500 HPCC List

Dell's highest current position is 14th with "Abe" on HPCC Top 500. Abe is an HPCC made up of Dell blade PowerEdge 1955 dual-socket, quad-core Intel Xeon 2.3 GHz processors,
and InfiniBand and GigE connections. It has a peak performance of more than
88 trillion calculations per second (88.3 teraflops).

Power and Cooling

Datacenter power and cooling is another important topic in HPCC solutions, because a
large number of densely populated servers in a data center can generate a lot of heat and consume a lot of power. HPCC solutions tend to be at the extreme end of the range of high density and high performance which makes an efficient power and cooling design a key component.

HPCC Software

Once all of the hardware for a Dell HPCC cluster is purchased, deployed and configured the next obvious step is deciding "What software do I need to run on the cluster?". There are two software components that are always needed:

Applications - ultimately the reason the cluster was purchased in the first place. Typically during deployment and overall cluster qualification, application benchmarks are run to ensure the cluster will meet the customer needs.

Operating System - Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Microsoft Windows CCS. Applications really influence the choice of operating system. If the application runs on Microsoft Windows but not on Linux then the Operating System choice is obvious.

Once the Applications and Operating System are chosen there are many 'other' software components required for an operational cluster all of these components form the Software Stack. Dell HPCC has a nice diagram on the Dell HPCC website that shows a high level HPCC Software Stack.

The Dell HPCC diagram is just an example software stack, other organizations have their own definition of a software stack but in general you need the following layers (in no particular order):

• Basic Cluster Services
• Cluster Provisioning
• Cluster Management
• Cluster Monitoring
• Cluster Events & Logging
• Workload Management
• Cluster Reporting
• Cluster Filesystem and/or Parallel Filesystem
• Patching & Repository Management
• Development tools
• Tools and Libraries for parallel programming
• Application and/or Grid Portals

As you can see that is a lot of components to install, and configure. Fortunately there is movement in the industry to standardize some of the components in the software stack to make it much easier. Intel, Dell and other partners such as Platform Computing, Ansys, CD-Adapco, The Mathworks and others are working together on Intel Cluster Ready.

The Intel site has a good description of Intel Cluster ready:

The Intel® Cluster Ready program and technology package makes it easier to design, build, sell, program, acquire, and deploy clusters built with Intel components. In collaboration with OEMs, channel members, and ISVs, the program specifies a common basis for clusters. This ensures ISV applications written to run on one certified cluster can reliably run on another certified cluster; conversely, a certified cluster will support multiple Intel® Cluster Ready ISV applications.