As a third step, the performance of the obtained GAMMA version of MD has been measured and compared to the performance of the PVM version on the same hardware platform as well as to the performance obtained by the PVM version on a Memory Channel cluster of DEC SMP workstations of higher class of costs and on a eight-nodes IBM SP2. Then the communication policy in the original PVM version of MD has been changed to fit the GAMMA Active Message-like communication style. Such porting required to extend the GAMMA programming library with FORTRAN stubs to GAMMA communication functions. The target of our work is the porting on GAMMA of a Molecular Dynamics (MD) code used to study polarizable fluids and written in FORTRAN with calls to PVM communication routines. The Genoa Active Message Machine (GAMMA) is a lowcost cluster of Personal Computers (PCs) networked by commodity fast LAN (100base-T Ethernet) and running a Linux operating system kernel enhanced with low-latency, high throughput support to inter-process communication based on the Active Messages paradigm. In this article are described the adaptation of a D-Link DGE-530T NIC (Network Interface Card) driver compatible with GAMMA (Genoa Active Message MAchine) and the tests that confirm that the driver improves the performance of the low-cost cluster of the Department of Computer Science of the FaCyT-UC, known as Mangosta. It is possible to built a cluster of PCs, but the communication speed among its nodes is considerably slower compared with the communication speed of a high-cost specialized one due to the use of non-specialized (Gigabit) network card drivers that uses the TCP/IP protocol stack for communication purposes. Abstract A cluster is a computer system formed by several computers with similar hardware, which maintains the communication among them through a high-speed network, working together as a single integrated resource. Palabras clave: Cluster, Driver, GAMMA, Optimización de comunicaciones, Tarjetas de red. En este artículo se describe la adaptación de un controlador para la NIC (Network Interface Card) D-Link DGE-530T compatible con GAMMA (Genoa Active Message MAchine) y los resultados que comprueban que dicho controlador mejora el rendimiento del cluster de bajo costo del Departamento de Computación de la FaCyT-UC, denominado Mangosta. Se puede construir un cluster de PCs, pero la velocidad de comunicación entre sus nodos es nota-blemente menor en comparación a la de un cluster especializado de alto costo, debido al uso de controladores (drivers) no especializados para tarjetas (Gigabit) en cluster que utilizan la pila de protocolos TCP/IP. Resumen Un cluster es un sistema de cómputo formado por varios computadores con hardware similar, que se comunican a través de una red de alta velocidad, que funciona como unúnicoun´unúnico computador.
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