Parallel data mining on ATM-connected PC cluster and optimization of its execution environments

Abstract

In this paper, we have constructed a large scale ATM-connected PC cluster consists of 100 PCs, implemented a data mining application, and optimized its execution environment. Default parameters of TCP retransmission mechanism cannot pro vide good performance for data mining application, since a lot of collisions occur in the case of all-to-all m ulticasting in the large scale PC cluster. Using a TCP retransmission parameters according to the proposed parameter optimization, reasonably good performance improvement is achiev ed for parallel data mining on 100 PCs. Association rule mining, one of the best-known problems in data mining, differs from conventional scientific calculations in its usage of main memory. W e have investigated the feasibility of using available memory on remote nodes as a swap area when working nodes need to swap out their real memory contents. According to the experimental results on our PC cluster, the proposed method is expected to be considerably better than using hard disks as a swapping device. © 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.