Design and performance evaluation of a linux hpc cluster

In this paper after a short theoretical introduction about modern techniques used in parallel computing, we report a case study related to the design and development of the Caliban Linux High Performance Computing cluster, carried out by the author in the High Performance Computing Laboratory of the University of L’Aquila. Finally we report some performance evaluation tests related to the Caliban cluster performed using HPL (High-Performance Linpack) benchmarks.