Since the Raspberry Pi’s launch, creators have primarily based numerous pc science schooling tasks on the common-or-garden pocket-sized system on a chip. These have included many tasks exploring low-cost Raspberry Pi clusters to introduce parallel and distributed computing (PDC) ideas.
The UK Open University (OU) offers distance schooling to college students of numerous ages, experiences, and backgrounds, which raises some points not confronted in additional conventional universities. The OU experiment utilizing Raspberry Pi clusters to introduce PDC ideas to distance studying college students started in 2019 and has been featured in an academic paper however deserves to be identified extra extensively.
The undertaking makes use of Raspberry Pi clusters primarily based on the OctaPi instructions, launched below a Creative Commons Licence by GCHQ. Eight Raspberry Pis are linked in a non-public community utilizing a router and a swap. One of the Raspberry Pis acts because the lead, whereas the others are servers offering outcomes again to the lead gadget. Programs written in Python run on the lead Pi, and the dispy package deal distributes actions throughout cores within the cluster.
Three packages have been developed for the clusters, and you may obtain them from the Git repository.
Two of the packages are text-based and linked to look issues: The touring salesperson and password hashing. As full search issues, these are perfect for instructing PDC ideas. The third program is graphical. The picture combiner takes three pictures as enter, with non-overlapping obstructions. It constructs a picture with none obstructions by evaluating the RGBA values pixel-by-pixel throughout the three pictures and choosing the median.
Using the cluster
The Open University is a distance studying establishment, so college students entry the clusters by way of an internet interface. Remote entry to the clusters makes use of the OpenSTEM Labs infrastructure on the college. Ten clusters (eight constructed with Pi 4, two constructed with Pi 3B+) are put in into racks, with webcams pointed at every cluster.
The college students choose which program to run, the variety of cores to make use of, and the parameters for the chosen program. As output, they see the time this system takes to run on a person Raspberry Pi in comparison with the cluster utilizing the variety of cores chosen. The scholar additionally sees the output from this system, both the password hashing outcome, the minimal and maximal touring salesperson route, or the non-occluded picture.
(Peter Cheer, CC BY-SA 4.0)
A webcam reveals a stay stream of the cluster. The lead Pi has an LED show to point out this system’s state because it runs. The webcam makes it clear to college students that they’re experimenting with actual devoted {hardware} reasonably than getting simulated or pre-recorded outcomes.
(Peter Cheer, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Each program has two actions related to it, illustrating completely different elements of program design and PDC operations. One of the primary studying factors is that PDC computing can present vital efficiency benefits however at a value within the time and assets taken to divide and distribute an issue and, in reverse, to recombine the outcomes. The second studying level is that effectivity is considerably affected by this system design.
Students prefer it
Currently, the usage of the Raspberry Pi clusters is elective. Based on the findings up to now, although, college students get pleasure from it and are motivated by having distant entry to bodily {hardware}.
One scholar has mentioned, “It was really interesting to be able to use real clusters instead of having it virtualized.”
Another provides, “It was really exciting to be able to actually see a cluster working and see the real effects of working with multiple cores. It was great to be able to try this out for myself, not just to read the theory about it!”
Students are utilizing the clusters to undertake studying actions designed to show the ideas of PDC reasonably than writing and working their very own packages. The expertise of growing a low-cost Raspberry Pi cluster to be used with open-distance college college students demonstrates the advantages distant sensible actions can have for instructing PDC ideas and interesting college students.
When I requested Daniel Gooch, one of many group members behind the undertaking, about it, he mentioned: “For me, where we differ is that we’ve taken an existing set of Raspberry Pi instructions and worked on integrating in additional wrap-around material to ensure it can cope with the distance and scale we operate on.”
