In Search of Clusters for High Performance Computing Education

This paper examines the issue of High-Performance Computing (HPC) platforms in undergraduate education and the Bootable Cluster CD (BCCD) to facilitate hands-on, classroom immersion in HPC topics. There is measurable benefits derived from teaching HPC topics through providing hands-on clustering experience to the students. Supporting an HPC environment for instruction, however, is accompanied by the commensurate demand in administrative tasks associated with staffing costs or personnel to maintain a dedicated high-performance computing environment–from maintenance of user accounts and configuring software components, to keeping ahead of the latest security advisories. In this document, the authors survey several HPC computing environments in the context of HPC education: The Open Source Clustering Application Resources (OSCAR), ClusterKnoppix, and NPACI Rocks, and we will focus on the unique aspects of the BCCD in breadth of HPC software, ease of configuration, and ease of administration.