research-article

The cluster coffer: : Teaching HPC on the road

Authors:

Philipp Gschwandtner,

Alexander Hirsch,

Herbert Jordan,

Thomas FahringerAuthors Info & Claims

Volume 155, Issue C

Pages 50 - 62

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpdc.2021.04.013

Published: 01 September 2021 Publication History

Highlights

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Showing the feasibility of constructing small, portable HPC systems for education.

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Illustrating the benefits of this system for live interaction and application steering.

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Providing enough material and information for others to reproduce and extend our work.

Abstract

Teaching parallel programming and HPC is a difficult task. There is a large number of sophisticated hardware and software components, each complex on their own and often showing non-intuitive interaction when used in combination. We consider education in HPC among the more difficult topics in computer science due to the fact that larger distributed memory systems are ubiquitous yet inaccessible and intangible to students. In this work, we present the Cluster Coffer, a miniature cluster computer based on 16 ARM compute boards that we believe is suitable for reducing the entry barrier to HPC in teaching and public outreach. We discuss our design goals for providing a portable, inexpensive system that is easy to maintain and repair. We outline the implementation path we took in terms of hardware and software, in order to provide others with the information required to reproduce and extend our work. Finally, we present two use cases for which the Cluster Coffer has been used multiple times, and will continue to be used in the upcoming years.

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Digital Library

Cited By

Psistakis AChrysos NChaix FAsiminakis MGianioudis MXirouchakis PPapaefstathiou VKatevenis M(2022)Optimized Page Fault Handling During RDMAIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2022.317566633:12(3990-4005)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TPDS.2022.3175666

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The cluster coffer: Teaching HPC on the road

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Information & Contributors

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Published In

cover image Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing

Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing Volume 155, Issue C

Sep 2021

121 pages

ISSN:0743-7315

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Elsevier Inc.

Publisher

Academic Press, Inc.

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 September 2021

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Cited By

Psistakis AChrysos NChaix FAsiminakis MGianioudis MXirouchakis PPapaefstathiou VKatevenis M(2022)Optimized Page Fault Handling During RDMAIEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems10.1109/TPDS.2022.317566633:12(3990-4005)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TPDS.2022.3175666

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