Early computers worked with 8 bits, o r a byte to solve problems. Most modern computers work with 32 bits at a time, with many dealing with 64 bits per operation, which is similar to increasing the width of a highway. Another method to increasing computing power will be to increase the clock speed, which is similar to raising the speed limits.

However, there are limits to performance benefits that can be achieved by just increasing the bus width or clock speed. For time-intensive computations, using many computers as oppose to one to solve the same problem, will be an alternate approach.

So, what then is a cluster, the different types, their uses and the possible reasons for their wide adoption in industries? why consider using Linux as the platform for clustering?

Talking about HPC architectures, what distinctions can b e made Between ; Symmetric Multiprocessors (SMP), Vector processors and Clusters? What are those elements I need to consider when designing a solution based on a high performance cluster?

HPC is mostly centered on the concept of parallelism. How is this important and how does it relate to my application design?

A file system is a major part of any operating system. In a cluster environment it makes sense to talk about distributed file system. Is NFS or PVFS known to you? What are they and how do they differ from regular file systems e.g. ext3 ,jfs etc.

When it comes to managing a cluster in a production environment with a large user base, job scheduling and monitoring are crucial. Can you possibly address this will minimal effort? Clusters are built to perform, and you need to know how fast they are.

What tool can you use to benchmark a cluster?