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<DIV>From Jacek Radajewski & Douglas Eadline's excellent 'Beowulf HowTo' see
the introduction: <A
href="http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Beowulf-HOWTO.html#toc2">http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Beowulf-HOWTO.html#toc2</A>
(I hope that I don't need to ask for copyright approval for this extract)</DIV>
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<DIV>"<A name=ss2.2>2.2 What is a Beowulf ?</A> </DIV>
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<P><I>Famed was this Beowulf: far flew the boast of him, son of Scyld, in the
Scandian lands. So becomes it a youth to quit him well with his father's
friends, by fee and gift, that to aid him, aged, in after days, come warriors
willing, should war draw nigh, liegemen loyal: by lauded deeds shall an earl
have honor in every clan.</I> Beowulf is the earliest surviving epic poem
written in English. It is a story about a hero of great strength and courage who
defeted a monster called Grendel. See <A
href="http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Beowulf-HOWTO-5.html#history">History</A> to
find out more about the Beowulf hero.
<P>There are probably as many Beowulf definitions as there are people who build
or use Beowulf Supercomputer facilities. Some claim that one can call their
system Beowulf only if it is built in the same way as the NASA's original
machine. Others go to the other extreme and call Beowulf any system of
workstations running parallel code. My definition of Beowulf fits somewhere
between the two views described above, and is based on many postings to the
Beowulf mailing list: "</P>
<P>What this may not clearly identify clearly is the 'motivation' for calling
these machines by this name. The 'lore' I've hard is that the 'Grendel'
monster that one wanted to {destroy - or avoid at least} was the then-typical
'supercomputer' - with it's (at least) monster-like appetite for ($, maintenance
costs, downtime, programming investment). On the other hand, the vendors
of the day tended to identify their 'best' machines by names more like 'Thor' I
think. I wouldn't be surprised if the person who suggested the moniker
visits here, though, so maybe we'll get the 'true' story.</P>
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