[ExeterLUG] [LUG] Raspberry PI cluster project

[Rick.Timmis]

Gordon Henderson <gordon+lug at drogon.net> wrote:On Tue, 5 Nov 2013, Paul Sutton wrote:

> Hi
>
> A while back it was suggested we try and build a raspberry pi cluster
> and test it by cacluating Pi.  The topic seems to have gone quiet, maybe
> we can do this at a Pi jam, or something.

This might be a fun project to do - but don't be under the impression that 
you're making some sort of supercomputer here... This is purely an 
academic excercise.

Agreed but that is what makes it exciting, because at such a low cost, and especially if a bunch of us bring our Pi's along we can create a learning environment that we hardly every get access to.
Certainly I covered parallel processing in the curriculum at college, but to date I have never practically mucked about with this stuff. 

My Desktop can compute Pi faster than a small cluster of Pi's My desktop 
takes 60 watts - that's about 15 Pi's worth of electrical power - would 15 
Pi's be faster? Unlikely. The program would also be more complex, although 
the problem of solving Pi on parallel processors have been "solved", 
trying to do something similar for other calculations may be somewhat more 
complex.

For my ten penith worth I would like to suggest Bitcoin minning on a Pi` beowulf cluster. It would be excellent to think that ExeterLUG mined its first bit coin on such a device. Happy to run it on my power in my office until it makes a strike!

The "classic" parallel solver is for raytracing, or something like a 
fractal where you can use a SIMD type scenario - each node gets the same 
data, runs the same code, but is told which part of the data set to work 
on. This works well for data sets like images, etc. but not so well for 
things like calculating Pi - unless there is an algorithm that says: "Give 
me digits A to B of Pi" that's efficient...

And the physical wiring will be intersting but not difficult - a single 
24-port Ethernet switch will do, and you'll need a big number of power 
sockets too

Good luck!

Win, Lose or Draw this will be great fun...


ATB

Rick



Gordon






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