LittleFe: parallel and distributed computing education on the move
Charles Peck · Journal of computing sciences in colleges · 2010
Many institutions have little or no access to parallel computing platforms for in--class computational science or parallel and distributed computing education. Key concepts, motivated by science, are taught more effectively and memorably on an actual parallel platform. LittleFe is a complete 6 node Beowulf style portable computational cluster. The entire package weighs less than 50 pounds; easily travels; and sets--up in 5 minutes. Current generation LittleFe hardware includes multi--core processors and GPGPU support enabling support for shared memory parallelism, distributed memory parallelism, and hybrid models. By leveraging the Bootable Cluster CD (BCCD, [3]) project, and the Computational Science Education Reference Desk (CSERD, [5]), LittleFe is a powerful, ready--to--run, computational science and parallel programming educational platform for the price of a high--end laptop.