High Performance Computing Environments Without the Fuss: The Bootable Cluster CD

Authors:
Sarah M. Diesburg;Paul A. Gray;David Joiner
Affiliations:
University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls;University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls;Kean University, Union, NJ
Venue:
IPDPS '05 Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'05) - Workshop 13 - Volume 14
Year:
2005

Citing 1
Cited 6

A high-performance, portable implementation of the MPI message passing interface standard

Parallel Computing

Teaching parallel computing to science faculty: best practices and common pitfalls

Proceedings of the eleventh ACM SIGPLAN symposium on Principles and practice of parallel programming
Event-driven configuration of a neural network CMP system over an homogeneous interconnect fabric

Parallel Computing
Implementing an affordable high-performance computing for teaching-oriented computer science curriculum

ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE)
On Construction of a Diskless Cluster Computing Environment in a Computer Classroom

International Journal of Grid and High Performance Computing
On Construction of a Diskless Cluster Computing Environment in a Computer Classroom

International Journal of Grid and High Performance Computing
Getting started with cluster computing BCCD and windows HPC 2008 R2 clusters

Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This paper confronts the issue of bringing high performance computing (HPC) education to those who do not have access to a dedicated clustering environments in an easy, fully-functional, inexpensive manner through the use of the "Bootable Cluster CD" (BCCD). As an example, many primarily undergraduate institutions (PUI's) do not have the facilities, time, or money to purchase hardware, maintain user accounts, configure software components, and keep ahead of the latest security advisories for a dedicated clustering environment. The BCCD project's primary goal is to support an instantaneous, drop-in distributed computing environment. A consequence of providing such an environment is the ability to promote the education of high performance computing issues at the undergraduate level through the ability to turn an ordinary lab of networked workstations temporarily into a non-invasive, fully-functional clustering classroom. The BCCD itself is a self-contained clustering environment in a bootable CD format. Using the BCCD, students, educators and researchers are able to gain insight into configuration, utilization, troubleshooting, debugging, and administration issues uniquely associated with parallel computing in a live, easy to use "drop-in" clustering environment. As the name implies, the BCCD provides a full, cohesive clustering environment running GNU/Linux when booted from the CDROM drives of networked workstations.