Introducing a Pi-based supercomputer

The basic requirements for the building of a supercomputer are as follows:

• Multiple processors

• A mechanism to interconnect them

We already have multiple processors in the form of multiple Raspberry Pi devices. We connect them via a networking hub, which is connected to each Pi via an Ethernet cable. A networking hub is nothing but a router that can accept Ethernet cables. There are dedicated networking hubs that can support many connections but for the purposes of this chapter, we can use a normal Wi-Fi router that accepts four LAN connections in addition to wireless connections. This is because we will not build a cluster of more than four Pi devices. You are welcome to add more devices to this cluster in order to increase your computing power. So, the hardware requirements for this chapter are as follows:

• Three Raspberry Pi devices

• Three Raspbian-installed SD cards

• A networking hub

• Three Ethernet cables

• Power supply for every device