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A Portable Cluster for Each Student

A Portable Cluster for Each Student. Dave Toth University of Mary Washington → Centre College dtoth@umw.edu → Dave.M.Toth@gmail.com → ???. Teaching Challenges. Hardware is expensive Expensive hardware is well defended ;) Labs are often in demand and sometimes closed

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A Portable Cluster for Each Student

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  1. A Portable Cluster for Each Student Dave Toth University of Mary Washington → Centre College dtoth@umw.edu →Dave.M.Toth@gmail.com → ???

  2. Teaching Challenges • Hardware is expensive • Expensive hardware is well defended ;) • Labs are often in demand and sometimes closed • Many students procrastinate • Many students commute • Students step on each other when there’s limited hardware • I’m not a sys admin and I’m not fixing the server at 1 AM!

  3. Solutions • Time slots for everybody during business hours – don’t be late! • Everybody lives on campus • Students can kick others out of labs • Dedicated hardware for the course • Everybody buys their own portable cluster!

  4. Inspiration Microwulf [1] & LittleFe [2] 4 node, 8 core, 8 GB RAM 6 node, 12 core + GPU capability, 12 GB RAM [1] http://www.calvin.edu/~adams/research/microwulf/photos/Microwulf-Pages/Image3.html [2] http://littlefe.net/sites/all/modules/brilliant_gallery/image.php?imgp=L2dhbGxlcnkvMDA2LmpwZw==&imgw=1000&imgh=669

  5. The Candidates • Android TV boxes • Raspberry Pi • Merrii Hummingbird • Cubieboard2 • ODROID U3 • Intel NUC and other similar systems

  6. The Personal Portable Cluster

  7. Boxed Up

  8. Parts List

  9. Minimum Cost Parts List * * bulk discount for 50 boards and no packaging

  10. Assembly • Unbox all items. • Peel off protective paper from case. • Assemble case using provided standoffs • Flash image on 2 micro SD cards. ~ 11 minutes per card with class 4 cards • Insert cards. • Connect all cables. • Power on & boot!

  11. TSP Performance

  12. Drawbacks • Doesn’t illustrate scalability by itself • I recommend XSEDE education grant • Never enough cores! • Working on other options (quad option, soon 8) • Still expensive • Distribute open source book with it (slight delay)

  13. Future Work • Get price down • Try for quad core (or 8-core) • Find board with GPU that supports CUDA or OpenCL • Benchmark different boards • Add more example programs to image file • Enhance documentation • Integrate boards into other courses (organization and operating systems)

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