Parallel@Valpo

Understanding parallel computing techniques is becoming increasing important….

To support teaching the topics, tools, and techniques effectively, VU has invested in a number of specialized assets for student projects and classroom that were inspired by the work of the CSinParallel Community.

These included 3 clusters, based on:

• the NVIDIA Jetson TK-1 (6 Nodes),
• the LittleFe v4d (with 6 Nodes), and
• the Parallella single-board system (5 nodes – retired).

Since the initial deploy of those three systems, four additional clusters have been added:

• two based on the Raspberry Pi 3B Plus (5 nodes) and
• two based on the ODROID XU4 (5 nodes)

This second generation is also designed to allow an easy combination of the twin 5 node clusters into a single 10 node cluster.

All of the systems were built by students, and have been used to support classroom and independent study projects on parallel, distributed, and high performance computing.  The Raspberry Pi systems have also been the basis of a partnership with the Department of Meteorology and Geography.

These assets are complemented by more powerful compute systems including “pascal.valpo.edu.“

Specification sheets 

Generation one: Jetson/CUDA Cluster * LittleFe Cluster * Parallella Cluster

Generation two: Raspberry Pi “Bramble” * ODROID XU4 Cluster

Generation three: RISC-V test system (“ein.valpo.edu”) * Deskpi6 Mini-ITX cluster

The original front end was “acorn” (Front End), which has been replaced in that role by “tweed” and “plaid“.

See also:

• The Next Generation Cluster / Mathematicians II
• Compute Systems – Pascal & Family / Mathematicians I
• The Penguins Application Cluster
• For the Parallel class – Historical List

Many thanks are due to Justin Szaday, Paul Nord, Terry Wade, Bryan Bockover, and Nick Koeppen who helped build out many of these systems.