Beowulf cluster

In a Beowulf cluster, the network cables (shown in blue) that connect the eight nodes to the master serve as a bus

A Beowulf cluster is a group of personal computers operating in parallel. Each node in the cluster doesn't have to be identical, although to simplify deployment this is usually the case.

Originally developed by Thomas L. Sterling and Donald Becker at NASA, Beowulf systems are deployed worldwide as "cheap supercomputers," chiefly in support of number crunching and scientific computing.

Usually the Beowulf 'nodes' are running Linux, however this is not required, as both Mac OS X and FreeBSD clusters have been created.

The nodes in a Beowulf cluster are networked into a small TCP/IP LAN, and have libraries and programs installed which allow processing to be shared among them.

There is no particular piece of software that defines a cluster as a Beowulf. Commonly used parallel processing libraries include MPI (Message Passing Interface) and PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine). Both of these permit the programmer to divide a task among a group of networked computers, and recollect the results of processing. It is a common misconception that any software will run faster on a Beowulf. The software must be re-written to take advantage of the cluster, and specifically have multiple non-dependent parallel computations involved in its execution.

The name Beowulf is derived from the main character in the Old English epic Beowulf.