Many PCs in a Box

Many network services involve real-time processing of a large number of simultaneous data flows, but little shared data among different flows. Loosely-coupled parallel architectures such as clusters or workstations are suitable platforms for implementing such applications. However, simply stacking the off-the-shelf systems often results in suboptimal density and cost. Addressing this problem, we have stripped down the traditional PC design leaving only components absolutely necessary to implement an element of a cluster. The new elements were packed into the design that maximizes the CPU density within physical and power constraints dictated by the standards. The resulting system is composed of 56 500MHz Pentium-3 processors interconnected with two Ethernet switches in a 1+1 redundant configuration, occupying only 12U of rack space including the cooling unit. The platform runs Linux operating system and provides an open runtime environment for implementing network services.