Grid computing’s 6th week provided a look into clusters, specifically:
- Clusters vs Grids
- Benchmarking techniques
- Cluster and Grid programming environments
Discussion of a cluster implementation method, Beowulf described how some clusters differ. A key characteristic of clusters is their interconnect technologies, some of the options are:
- Fast Ethernet
- Gigabit Ethernet
- 10 Gigabit Ethernet
- Myrianet
- Infiniband
For a detailed list and comparison: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths#Local_area_networks
It is also worth noting that latency can become more important than bandwidth is many cluster networks. This would be dependent on the programs running on the cluster.