Benchmarking Cluster Performance with Linpack 1.0a

Everyone knows that Linpack (http://www.netlib.org/linpack/) is the de-facto standard for benchmarking a multiecomputer's performance under load conditions caused by complex mathematical computations. Even the official high performance measuring project Top500 (http://www.top500.org) also uses Linpack itself as a yardstick of high performance computing measurement.

I also tested and benchmarked the performance of a small cluster through the High Performance Linpack benchmark 1.0a (http://icl.cs.utk.edu/hpl and http://www.netlib.org/benchmark/hpl/) and found the following results.

In addition I must comment that it took no time to set up a cluster by using the ParallelKnoppix distro (http://parallelknoppix.cebacad.net) as the distro itself being a live-cd based on auto node discovery.

So, let's talk lesser and see how were the results??!!

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Benchmarking Date: April 13, 2007

Platform: ParallelKnoppix version 2.4 (23-Feb-2007)

No. of nodes:3 + 1 Master machine

CPU: 1 x Pentium 4 HT @ 2.4 GHz on each node as well as server

RAM: 256 MB on each node as well as server

Inerconnect: Gigabit Realtek NIC connected through 24 port 100 mbps, HCL fast ethernet managed swtich

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And the benchmarked result was 2.35867 Giga-Flops!