Abstract
With the advances in computing power, high-performance computing (HPC) platforms have had an impact on not only scientific research in advanced organizations but also computer science curriculum in the educational community. For example, multicore programming and parallel systems are highly desired courses in the computer science major. However, the high cost of HPC equipment and maintenance makes it hard to be adapted into a conventional computer science curriculum. Specifically, teaching-oriented institutions cannot afford an HPC system due to the high cost, lack of experience, and smaller research infrastructure. The main objective of this article is to present an affordable and easy-to-use high-performance cluster system for teaching-oriented computer science curriculums. In order to address this, we have designed and implemented an affordable high-performance cluster system based on the PlayStation 3 (PS3). For the performance evaluation of the PS3 cluster, we conducted a benchmarking test, that is, matrix multiplication, with different numbers of synergistic processing elements (SPEs) and nodes. As a result, it was concluded that the PS3Cluster provides enough computing power as an HPC for computer science courses, while the total cost is less than 10% of an existing cluster system on the market that has similar performance. In addition, the implemented PS3Cluster system has been used for computer science courses, such as Parallel and Distributed Databases and Parallel Programming.
- Afsaneh Minaie, R. S.-M. 2009. Incorporating parallel computing in the undergraduate computer science curriculum. In Proceedings of the National ASEE Conference.Google Scholar
- Agarwal, S., Lim, J., Zelnik-Manor, L., Perona, P., Kriegman, D., and Belongie, S. 2005. Beyond pairwise clustering. In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, (CVPR '05). IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, 838--845. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Arpaci-Dusseau, A. C., Arpaci-Dusseau, R. H., Culler, D. E., Hellerstein, J. M., and Patterson, D. A. 1998. Searching for the sorting record: Experiences in tuning now-sort. In Proceedings of the SIGMETRICS Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Tools (SPDT '98). ACM, New York, 124--133. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Bader, D. A. 2004. Computational biology and high-performance computing. Commun. ACM 47, 11, 34--41. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Baru, C. and Fecteau, G. 1995. An overview of db2 parallel edition. SIGMOD Rec. 24, 2, 460--462. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Bjornson, R. D., Sherman, A. H., Weston, S. B., Willard, N., and Wing, J. 2002. Turboblast(r): A parallel implementation of blast built on the turbohub. In Proceedings of the 16th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS '02). IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, 325. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Blagojevic, F., Curtis-Maury, M., Yeom, J.-S., Schneider, S., and Nikolopoulos, D. 2008a. Scheduling asymmetric parallelism on a PlayStation3 cluster. In Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGRID '08). IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, 146--153. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Blagojevic, F., Curtis-Maury, M., Yeom, J.-S., Schneider, S., and Nikolopoulos, D. S. 2008b. Scheduling asymmetric parallelism on a playstation3 cluster. In Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid. IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, 146--153. Google ScholarDigital Library
- CHPC. 2012. Center for high performance computing at the University of Utah. http://www.chpc.utah.edu/.Google Scholar
- Cluster, S. P. 2011. Sony PS3 cluster (IBM Cell Be). http://moss.csc.ncsu.edu/mueller/cluster/ps3/.Google Scholar
- Culler, D. E. 1997. Parallel computing on the Berkeley now. In Proceedings of the 9th Joint Symposium on Parallel Processing (JSPP '97).Google Scholar
- Diesburg, S., Gray, P., and Joiner, D. 2005. High performance computing environments without the fuss: the Bootable Cluster CD. In Proceedings of the 19th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, 2005. IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, 8. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Fedora. 2011. Eclipse. http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/eclipse.Google Scholar
- Hacker, T. 2010. Hands-on high performance computing developing a cluster computing course for real world supercomputing. In Proceedings of the National ASEE Conference. 3.Google Scholar
- Joiner, D. A., Gray, P., Murphy, T., and Peck, C. 2006. Teaching parallel computing to science faculty: Best practices and common pitfalls. In Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP '06). ACM, New York, 239--246. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Kahle, J. A., Day, M. N., Hofstee, H. P., Johns, C. R., Maeurer, T. R., and Shippy, D. 2005. Introduction to the cell multiprocessor. IBM J. Res. Dev. 49, 4/5, 589--604. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Lee, J. and Abuzaghleh, O. 2011. Implementing an affordable high performance computing platform for teaching-oriented computer science curriculum. In Proceedings of the National ASEE Conference.Google Scholar
- Lillywhite, K., Lee, D.-J., Antani, S., Zhang, D., and Long, R. 2009. Lessons learned in developing a low-cost high performance medical imaging cluster. In Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems, (CBMS '09). IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, 1--6.Google Scholar
- Lu, F., Song, J., Cao, X., and Zhu, X. 2012. CPU/GPU computing for long-wave radiation physics on large GPU clusters. Comput. Geosci. 41, 47--55. Google ScholarDigital Library
- MPI. 2011. Open MPI. http://www.open-mpi.org/.Google Scholar
- Neill, R., Shabarshin, A., and Carloni, L. P. 2010. A heterogeneous parallel system running open MPI on a broadband network of embedded set-top devices. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers (CF '10). ACM, New York, 187--196. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Ngamsuriyaroj, S. and Pornpattana, R. 2010. Performance evaluation of TPC-H queries on mysql cluster. In Proceedings of the 24th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications Workshops (WAINA '10). IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, 1035--1040. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Peck, C. 2010. LittleFe: Parallel and distributed computing education on the move. J. Comput. Sci. Coll. 26, 1, 16--22. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Perlman, E., Burns, R., Li, Y., and Meneveau, C. 2007. Data exploration of turbulence simulations using a database cluster. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE Conference on Supercomputing (SC '07). ACM, New York, 23:1--23:11. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Sites. 2011. Top 500 supercomputer sites. http://www.top500.org/.Google Scholar
- Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. 2001. Sony business development. http://www.scei.co.jp/corporate/data/bizdatajpne.html.Google Scholar
- Sun, N., Kahaner, D., and Chen, D. 2010. High-performance computing in china: Research and applications. Int. J. High Perform. Comput. Appl. 24, 4, 363--409. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Tiwari, A., Chen, C., Chame, J., Hall, M., and Hollingsworth, J. K. 2009. A scalable auto-tuning framework for compiler optimization. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing (IPDPS '09). IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, 1--12. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Weininger, A. 2000. Handling very large databases with informix extended parallel server. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD '00). ACM, New York, 548--549. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Zhang, X., Ding, Y., Huang, Y., and Dong, X. 2010. Design and implementation of a heterogeneous high-performance computing framework using dynamic and partial reconfigurable FPGAs. In Proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (CIT '10). IEEE, Los Alamitos, CA, 2329--2334. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Implementing an affordable high-performance computing for teaching-oriented computer science curriculum
Recommendations
Undergraduate Educational Pathways for Developing a High-Performance Computing Workforce
PEARC '17: Proceedings of the Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2017 on Sustainability, Success and ImpactThe need for college graduates with high-performance computing (HPC) skills is rapidly increasing with the greater interest in tasks requiring big data processing. Major needs in medicine, geosciences, and data analytics, among other disciplines, drive ...
Implementing a new Computer Science Curriculum for middle school in Israel
FIE '12: Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)As part of a national strategic plan recently established by the Ministry of Education in Israel to strengthen science and technology education, an innovative Computer Science (CS) curriculum for middle school was developed. One main goal of the new ...
High-Performance Computing with Accelerators
This issue of CiSE is based on work presented at the US National Science Foundation workshop, Path to Petascale: Adapting Geo/Chem/Astro Applications for Accelerators and Accelerator Clusters, held at the US National Center for Supercomputing ...
Comments