First up. Search google/yahoo/askjeeves for user mode linux. http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/ http://www.usermodelinux.org/ http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/uml.xml http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue90/weber.html
Thx for tht.. very useful links.
In addition you can also use bochs (google it !) or Xen (google this too).
Also you might need a high end machine to simulate these many nodes.
If you have multiple machine connected on a network, you can try using Clusterknoppix. http://bofh.be/clusterknoppix/ http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-clustknop.html
The cluster consists of approximately nine nodes. Each of these nodes have a Pentium III processor with clock speed of approximately 1250 Mhz. Total memory and swap memory are 1027464 KB and 2048276 KB respectively.
-- Apoorva Kulkarni ozzman[AT]bsd.miki.eu.org
The network is the computer... http://www.linux-ha.org http://www.linuxhpc.org