[Beowulf] raspberri pi or similar hard ware cluster

[Jeff White]

On 11/26/2013 07:53 PM, Adam DeConinck wrote:
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>> Has anyone tried or is working on setting up a cluster using raspberri
>> pi's or similar types of hardware?
>
> This has been done a bunch of times, and seems to be an increasingly
> popular way to learn about HPC clusters. I think they're probably
> best-used for educational purposes, as you have to stack a fair number
> of Raspberry Pi's together to compare to even one Intel chip... though I
> am aware of one grad student who used such a cluster to do his thesis
> research.
>
> I put together a very small RPi cluster (5 nodes) and found it to be a
> lot of fun, if not much practical use. (See [0] for my blog post about
> my toy cluster, which also links to a few other larger RPi systems.)
>
> SDSC also had a 12-node cluster at SC13, running a display wall where
> they had a Tron Lightcycles tournament going. Very fun if you got to
> check it out. :)
>
> [0]
> http://blog.ajdecon.org/building-tiny-compute-clusters-for-fun-and-learning/
>
> Cheers,
> Adam
>
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Yea, I've seen it done a few times as well.  I recall at least one 
builder of such a system said one of the biggest problems is the 
cabling.  The Pi is very small so the cable mass with a bunch of them 
all together is an issue.

Jeff White - GNU+Linux Systems Administrator
University of Pittsburgh - CSSD