Introduction

In Spring of 2002, the Physics Computer Network (PCN) deployed a ``Beowulf'' style cluster of Linux systems. The low cost of commodity x86 PC hardware, combined with the Open Source Linux operating system allows a parallel supercomputer to be created for a fraction of the cost of a commercial cluster system.

The cluster at PCN is based on the Debian GNU/Linux ¹ system.

Similarly, the cluster at PCN is operated in a collaborative way: research groups in the department who wish to apply cluster computing to their research can contribute nodes to the cluster. Contributing nodes to the cluster allows reseachers to combine their nodes, which they have priority access to, with those of other groups into a greater aggregate system.