How to connect several pcs together to make parallel computing

[juarezman]

Hi all,

I'm a college professor and was assigned a new course called Distributed Operating Systems.
I'ts new material for me. And in research for class I have found that several machines can be connected together to build a bigger computer like a supercomputer.
My question is how?
How could I connect several PC's and make them work together like parallel computing, o something likea super computer?
Any ones help would be greatly appreciated.

If We could give this a try for a semester project, it would become great research paper if anyone's interested.??!

thanks in advence.

 

[indyitguy]

Oops... deleted my previous post.

I could be wrong but it sounds like you want to build a server cluster. dbhosttexas breaks it down quite nicely below.

Windows Azure is an option you could look at. I'm sure there are plenty cheaper routes to go...
http://www.microsoft.com/hpc/en/us/product/high-performance-computing-faqs.aspx

 

[dbhosttexas]

It all depends on the operating system you want to use, and the specific networking technologies. But you are referring to what is known as an HPC cluster (High Performance Computing). There are LOTS of ways to do this, but a typical high level overview of the architecture would be...

#1. Some sort of shared storage backend. It can be as simple and cheap as a shared NAS drive that behaves as an iSCSI target.
#2. A minimum of 2 compute nodes. The more the merrier. For these you will want a minimum of 3 gigabit ethernet ports. 4 is better. Those ports are for.. (This is asuming you are using ethernet iSCSI for storage and not something like a fiber SAN).
#3. First ethernet port usually is used for the public network interface, how users, and public applications talk to the cluster.
#4. Second and third port used for multipathing, file system backend, and cluster node intercommunications.
#5. The fourth port is used for private / backend network communications. This can also be used as a heartbeat, and is typically used for backup traffic, that way you aren't saturating your public or SAN networks.

You do need to spend some time googling "HPC cluster" and reviewing the results though. There is plenty of info to be had....

 

[alokshukla786]

check this link i found useful this for myself

http://www.webstreet.com/super_computer.htm