MegaProto/E: power-aware high-performance cluster with commodity technology

In our research project named “Mega-Scale Computing Based on Low-Power Technology and Workload Modeling”, we have been developing a prototype cluster not based on ASIC or FPGA but instead only using commodity technology. Its packaging is extremely compact and dense, and its performance/power ratio is very high. Our previous prototype system named “MegaProto” demonstrated that one cluster unit, which consists of 16 commodity low-power processors, can be successfully implemented on just 1U height chassis and it is capable of up to 2.8 times higher performance/power ratio than ordinary high-performance dualXeon 1U server units. We have improved MegaProto by replacing the CPU and enhancing the I/O performance. The new cluster unit named “MegaProto/E” with 16 Transmeta Efficeon processors achieves 32 GFlops of peak performance, which is 2.2fold greater than that of the original one. The cluster unit is equipped with an independent dual network of Gigabit Ethernet, including du...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: Taisuke Boku, Mitsuhisa Sato, Daisuke Takahashi, Hiroshi Nakashima, Hiroshi Nakamura, Satoshi Matsuoka, Yoshihiko Hotta
• Keywords: Cluster Unit, Distributed And Parallel Computing, IPPS 2006, Performance/power Ratio, Prototype Cluster