Cluster of Dreams
One of the best ways to get started in HPC is to build your own cluster. The new Raspberry Pi 2 is a great system for getting started with high-performance computing.
Build it and you will learn: Building an RPi2 cluster
Lead Image © studiostock, 123RF.com
The biggest and fastest computers in the world are the HPC systems used by science, government, and industry to perform complex calculations for data mining, 3D modeling, and other scientific problems. Large HPC systems sometimes use thousands of processors.
Behind the scenes, every HPC system is actually a network of computers working together in what is called a cluster. A typical high-performance cluster consists of a master node and a collection of compute nodes (see Figure 1). The master node subdivides the task (typically a complex mathematical equation) into a collection of smaller tasks that are assigned to the compute nodes. The compute nodes crank through the calculations, sometimes displaying the output in realtime and sometimes storing the results to assemble later into a final solution.
An HPC system thus consists of several smaller pieces. How small? I decided to try my luck with building an HPC system using the Raspberry Pi 2. Of course, my HPC system won't set any speed records, but I can still use it for testing and demonstrations.
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