BUILDING AN HPC CLUSTER WITH RPIs

The objective of this week long activity is to familiarize yourself with the process of building and configuring a High-performance Computing (HPC) cluster. As a proof-of-concept you will be using Raspberry Pi computers to create a low-cost Bewolf-type cluster.

You will follow this "How to Build a Low-Cost HPC Cluster" which contains all the instructions to proceed. Make sure you read the instructions to have a general idea of the whole process. Organize all the necessary tools, cables, devices (RPis, switch, USB power hub, memories, hard drives), and so on, to know which pieces to use at each step.

This guide was the result of an independent study performed by Nathan H. Silverman, a Kalamazoo College's student in Computer Science, under the supervision of Dr. Sandino Vargas-Pérez. If you want to read the paper Designing an Independent Study to Create HPC Learning Experiences for Undergraduates written by Dr. Vargas-Pérez, follow the link. It was presented in the 2022 IEEE 29th International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data and Analytics Workshop (HiPCW) and published by IEEE.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Many of the steps in the guide might not work from scratch, but you will (as a group) try to figure out the issues and attempt to solve them.

Final Report

For the final group report you will:

  • Talk about your experience setting up the cluster: material, configuration, challenges and how your group solved then.
  • Talk about the interconnection network used in your configuration: what's the type of interconnection network, advantages and disadvantages, how does it allow communication between nodes.
  • Describe the performance of the cluster with respect to Jigwé: how faster/slower it is, what were the results obtained when running tests, etc.
  • Reflect about the whole process as a group.