Chapter 1. Clusters, Parallel Computing, and Raspberry Pi – A Brief Background

The domain of parallel computing is an interesting one, but building a cluster for fun has often required the use of expensive or bulky off-the-shelf hardware, such as desktop PC's or implementing complex virtual machine setups.

So what is a cluster? This term will come up often in the following chapters and essentially means, in the context of this book, a group of separate devices networked together. Each device on this network is often referred to as a node.

Thanks to the Raspberry Pi's low cost and small physical footprint, building a cluster to explore parallel computing has become far cheaper and easier for users at home to implement. Not only does it allow you to explore the software side, but also the hardware as well.

While Raspberry Pis wouldn't be suitable for a fully-fledged production system, they provide a great tool for learning the technologies that professional clusters are built upon. For example, they allow you to work with industry standards, such as MPI and cutting edge open source projects such as Hadoop.

This chapter will provide you with a basic background to parallel computing and the technologies associated with it. It will also provide you with an introduction to using the Raspberry Pi.