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LittleFe - Computational Science Education on the Move
Many institutions and teaching environments do not have access to parallel platforms for parallel and distributed computing education. Teaching key concepts such as speedup, efficiency, and load balancing are much more effectively done on a parallel platform. LittleFe is a complete 6 node Beowulf style portable computational cluster. LittleFe weighs less than 50 pounds, easily and safely travels via checked baggage on the airlines, and sets-up in 5 minutes wherever there is a 110V outlet and a wall to project an image on. By leveraging the Bootable Cluster CD project, and its associated curriculum modules, LittleFe makes it possible to have a powerful ready-to-run computational science and HPC educational platform for under $3,000USD.
General Information
- The Register article is at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/19/littlefe_cluster
- The Acme poster from SC06 is at http://cluster.earlham.edu/detail/project/Little-Fe/sc06-acme-poster.pdf
- There are a couple of pictures of LittleFe/x86 (Mark I) and a tracker available at http://cs.earlham.edu/little-fe
- A short presentation about LittleFe/PPC (Mark II), from SIAM's 2006 Computational Science and Engineering Conference, and pictures of that design can be found at http://cluster.earlham.edu/detail/project/Little-Fe/ppc-overview/little-fe-pcc.html
- Our wiki documents various aspects of the hardware design and assembly tips if you would like to make your own LittleFe. You can find it at http://wiki.cs.earlham.edu/index.php/LittleFe_Cluster.
- The HPC Wire article about LittleFe can be found at http://news.taborcommunications.com/msgget.jsp?mid=494184&xsl=story.xsl
- People interested in the LittleFe project
- Generic proposal
- First message announcing http://LittleFe.net
Using LittleFe
- Parts Manifest
- Detailed Assembly Instructions
- Operational Instructions
- Liberation Instructions
- LittleFe Manual
- Assembly Instructions (coming soon, appendix A)
LittleFeAR: LittleFe -- Advanced Resources
To those out there that snub their noses at small, low-power computing environments, we bring you LittleFeAR, a small but extremely capable LittleFe system.
An outcome of ongoing conversations with Stephen Wheat was a considerable donation of Intel 5000PAL systems with two dual-core 3.2GHz 771 processors. The systems arrived as mostly "barebones" systems, leaving us to scrounge for disks (cheap) and memory (pricey) to make a go of things.
These boards are extremely powerful, which turns out to be both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing, because we can (and did!) build a very powerful system with these boards to show high-end and practical high-performance computing in our workshops.
The downside of these boards is weight. Unlike the smaller boards, where we can feed the power requirements by splitting a single 12-volt power supply amongst all boards, these systems are hefty enough to demand their own power supply. Having multiple power supplies increases the weight of the package significantly, which means that this particular configuration will be most suitable for local classroom use.
The initial images of LittleFeAR smattering this section were taken of the LittleFeAR used for the LCI Workshop in Norman, OK, February 20-24. It is very appropriate that the initial images were taken from inside the hotel room, as this is where all highly productive LittleFe development work takes place!
The LittleFeAR shown here was used to demonstrate the installation of OSCAR, the inner workings of the Performance API known as PAPI, patching and building the Linux kernel, and the hidden secrets of System Imager. The system was also used for one-on-one instruction for demonstrating how to build customized RPM kernel packages for ease of updating client nodes in the back end of the cluster.
| File:IMG 3147.JPG LittleFeAR, Images of the debut of LittleFeAR | File:IMG 3148.JPG LittleFeAR, Image 2 | File:IMG 3149.JPG LittleFeAR, Image 3 | File:IMG 3150.JPG LittleFeAR, Image 4 | File:IMG 3151.JPG LittleFeAR, Image 5 |
LittleFe meets Efika!
Our group received a very generous donation of Efika boards from Genesi and Freescale in December, 2006. These boards are extremely low power, yet very capable in terms of computation and should make excellent boards for the LittleFe project. Setting up Linux on these boards was extremely easy to do. This EfikaInstall shows just how easy installing Debian on the Efika boards can be.
LittleFe on the Road
- SIAM's Computational Science and Engineering - February, 2005 in Orlando, FL
- League of Innovation Community College - September, 2005 in Dallas, TX
- Computational Science Conference - November, 2005 at Oberlin University in Oberlin, OH
- SIAM's Parallel Processing for Scientific Computing - February, 2006 in San Francisco, CA
- ACM's Principles and Practices of Parallel Programming - March, 2006 at Columbia University in New York, NY
- Presentation to David Joiner's umm class - March, 2006 at Kean University in Union, NJ
- National Science Foundation Headquarters tour - March, 2006 in Arlington, VA
- NCSI Parallel and Distributed Computing workshop - May, 2006 at Houston Community College in Houston, TX
- TeraGrid06 - June, 2006 in Indianapolis
- NITLE Introduction to Parallel and Cluster Computing Workshop - June, 2006 at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX
- SC Education Program Committee workshop - July, 2006 at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, IL
- Euro-Par 2006 - August, 2006 in Dresden, Germany
- SC06 - November, 2006 in Tampa, FL
- LCI Workshop (Linux Clusters Institute) LittleFeAR's debut - February 20-24 2007, Norman OK
- SIAM's Computational Science and Engineering - February, 2007 in Costa Mesa, CA
- NITLE Introduction to Parallel and Cluster Computing Workshop - June, 2006 at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA
- SC Education Program summer workshops for parallel and distributed computing - Summer, 2007
- SC07 - November, 2007 in Reno, NV
- SIAM's Parallel Processing for Scientific Computing - March, 2008 in Atlanta, GA
- SC Education Program summer workshops for parallel and distributed computing - Summer, 2008
- SC08 - November, 2008 in Austin, TX
- SIGCSE 09 - March, 2009 in Chattanooga, TN
- TeraGrid 09 - June, 2009 in Washington, DC
- SC Education Program summer workshops for parallel and distributed computing - Summer, 2009
- SC09 - November, 2009 in Portland, OR
- SIGCSE 10 - March, 2010 in Milwaukee, WI
