Preamble

Clic is sponsorised by the RNTL, others partners are ID-IMAG, BULL and Mandrakesoft. This project's aim is to produce a HPC Linux Distribution for 32 & 64 bits processors.

    Introduction

It is an established fact that the clusters of machines can reach performances equivalent to supercomputers for a cost of a lower order of magnitude.

This was not enough to generalize the use of the clusters in free "software" environment, because these distributed architectures are currently more complex to program and to manage that architectures owners and/or with memory shared.

The generalization of the use of clusters thus passes by the offer of programming and administration interfaces and tools which allow to see (to reach, manage, program) a cluster of machines as if it were about only one machine. The objective of the project is to provide a Linux distribution for clusters machines, in the form of an entirely free software package (licence GPL or comparable), meeting the needs for deployment, administration and of programming of clusters within the framework of exploitation for intensive calculation.

    Objectives

The objective of project CLIC is to allow the realization of large scientific computers while being based on software known as "free" (i.e. under licence GPL or comparable). The objective consists of the realization a GNU/Linux distribution for clusters of machines, meeting the needs for deployment, administration and programming of clusters within the framework of exploitation for intensive calculation.

    Members of the project