Introduction

We are two students in the Master 1 in Computer Science of the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (UNS).

Our second semester project is to create a Raspberry Pi 2 computing farm so we have to discover if it is worth the money. This computing farm will be used to make a resolution method that can be easily parallelised, meaning it will be integer-only computing, no matricial or linear computing.

What is Raspberry Pi 2?

Raspberry Pi is a series of credit card-sized single-board computers and the model 2 is the lastest released. For more informations and technical details, click here.

Picture of Raspberry Pi 2

The 2 different aspects of our work : software and hardware.

The software part consists in finding the best compiler and the best operating system regarding the final use.

The hardware part is about arrangement of space, temperature, energy consumption and money. We will think about how to put this computing farm in boxes (racks of 1U, 2U or 4U) to take the less space without burning them. Then we will look for alternative equipments (power supplies, network links, ...) that cost less or have less energy consumption to find the lower price for the best computing farm.

When all this work is done, we will compare the performance datas to the ones of a Intel I7 4970k processor to find out whether or not this farm costs less for the same (or better performance) than the I7.