Developing an Automated Mechanism for Cluster Computing in Computerized Classroom

AbstractScientific computing has become one of the key players in the advance of modern science and technologies. In the meantime, due to the success of developments in processor fabrication, the computing power of Personal Computer (PC) is not to be ignored as well. Lots of high throughput type of applications can be satisfied by using the current desktop PCs, especially for those in computerized classrooms, and leave the supercomputers for the demands from large scale high performance parallel computations. The goal of this work is to develop an automated mechanism for cluster computing to utilize the computing power such as resides in computerized classroom. The PCs in computerized classroom are usually setup for education and training purpose during the daytime, and shut down at night. After well deployment, these PCs can be transformed into a pre-configured cluster computing resource immediately without touching the existing education/training environment installed on these PCs. Thus, the training activities will not be affected by this additional activity to harvest idle computing cycles. To echo today's energy saving issues, a dynamic power management is also developed to minimize energy cost. This development not only greatly reduces the management efforts and time to build a cluster, but also implies the reduction of the power consumption by such a mechanism