Affordable Supercomputing Solutions: Cluster Computers: In Business Applications

Businesses need fast computing environments to quickly process the voluminous transactions and to respond to market requirements. Most companies cannot afford the cost of a supercomputer. As an experimental design, the authors have developed a cluster-computing project at their institution, to expose business students to the process of building and operating a cluster computer for use in supercomputing applications. The project helps students learn the technologies of distributed computing, parallel computing, networking, securing networked environments and designing applications for distributed computing. The purpose of this paper is to share the experiences of cluster computer implementation in a business curriculum and how cluster computing can be exploited for solving many complex real world business applications in a wide variety of industries.