The SHRIMP cluster-computing system has progressed to a point of relative maturity; a variety of applications are running on a 16-node system. We have enough experience to understand what we did right and wrong in designing and building the system. In this paper we discuss some of the lessons we learned about computer architecture, and about the challenges involved in building a signi cant working system in an academic research environment. We evaluate signi cant design choices by modifying the

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... network interface rmware and the system software in order to empirically compare our design to other approaches.