[HH] Raspberry Pi clusters

[Tom Metro]

Kurt showed a picture of this in his last BLU talk I believe...

http://coen.boisestate.edu/ece/raspberry-pi/

  In the process of developing a novel data sharing system, Kiepert
  became convinced that the best way to test his ideas was to simulate
  them on a Beowulf cluster. A Beowulf cluster is a group of computers,
  usually identical, that are networked together in order to share the
  task of processing complex problems.
  ...
  Kiepert decided to build his own Beowulf cluster using RPis. Not only
  were the RPi's unique features for controlling simple hardware very
  useful, but the cost of creating the cluster was incredibly low. The
  cost for an RPi with an 8GB SD memory card is about $45, making the
  RPi platform one of the cheapest ways to create a cluster of 32 nodes.
  ...
  Perhaps the biggest downside is that an RPi is nowhere near as
  powerful as a desktop PC. Also, because of the limited processing
  capability, the RPiCluster will not reliably support multiple users
  simultaneously. However, Kiepert believes these drawbacks do not have
  a negative impact on his current research.


And a video showing it off:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_r3z1jYHAc&feature=youtube_gdata_player


Ignoring the issue of whether this is worth doing (as Kurt pointed out,
the performance of a Pi makes this somewhat pointless, though might make
sense if your objective is to test clustering functionality rather than
performance), I've yet to see a Pi cluster with a mechanical design that
allows you to easily extract/replace an individual Pi.

 -Tom