RPiCluster: Another Raspberry Pi Cluster, With Neat Tricks

New submitter TheJish writes "The RPiCluster is a 33-node Beowulf cluster built using Raspberry Pis (RPis). The RPiCluster is a little side project I worked on over the last couple months as part of my dissertation work at Boise State University. I had need of a cluster to run a distributed simulator I've been developing. The RPiCluster is the result. I've written an informal document on why I built the RPiCluster, how it was built, and how it performs as compared to other platforms. I also put together a YouTube video of it running an MPI parallel program I created to demo the RGB LEDs installed on each node as part of the build. While there have certainly been larger RPi clusters put together recently, I figured the Slashdot community might be interested in this build as I believe it is a novel approach to the rack mounting and power management of RPis."

Slow Pi

[Anonymous Coward]

Running the numbers from the paper says the $1000 x86 compute node took 3.85 seconds on a benchmark, where the RPI cluster took (456/32)=14.25 seconds and also cost about $1000. Thus, after porting the software, a 3.7 times slow down was achieved over traditional methods.

While there may be some gains (GPIO and such may be useful in this context) they didn't appear to be used here.

This looks like a fun project, that got research money, but was not very useful for the goal the money was supposed to be spent on. I haven't looked into the details, and I expect the parts may get reused for other projects later, but still, it seems kinda silly. The RPI was not build for that, its inefficient to use it that way.

Rack mounting?

[thegarbz]

Not to diminish your achievements which are otherwise quite cool, but this novel approach to rack mounting is anything but. Quite possibly the single most important feature of a rack is ease of component access. By tying all components together with PCB standoffs you basically can't remove a single RPi if there's ever a pressing need.

If anything you've shown a novel way of cramming things together without the use of a rack.

should this perhaps be at RPI instead? jk!

[girlinatrainingbra]

With a name like that (RPiCluster), perhaps it ought to be situated at the R.P.I. [wikipedia.org] in Troy, New York? Though for that nomenclature geographicalocalization, the Republican Party of Iowa [wikipedia.org] has as much claim to RPI [wikipedia.org] as these others do. I like the justification pointed out by the builder of this RPi.Cluster:

The RPi platform has to be one of the cheapest ways to create a cluster of 32 nodes. The cost for an RPi with an 8GB SD card is ~$45. For comparison, each node in the Onyx cluster was somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500. So, for near the price of one PC-based node, we can create a 32 node Raspberry Pi cluster! [from the pdf file at http://coen.boisestate.edu/ece/files/2013/05/Rasp.-Pi.pdf [boisestate.edu] ]

So the summary of the informal document is that it's cheaper to build a 32-node Rasp.-Pi cluster than to purchase even a single node of the 32-node Beowulf cluster that may or may not be available to you. And if you want to get your Ph.D. work done, I must agree that it sounds better to not be dependent upon the whims and follies of others' benevolence in having external hardware clusters available for your use. Bravo, Joshua Kiepert, I like your "informal writeup". Best wishes on your work!

Re:Hm...

[hughbar]

Yes that's funny, but no-one much on here knows French...