miniHPC Hackday: Building, Testing, and Sharing Best Practices
Newcastle University
Five clusters. How much work can we get done in 2 days?
On 16 and 17 April 2026 we will be getting together to work on our Single Board Computer (SBC) High Performance Clusters (HPC). At the moment we have five cluster that are being developed. These clusters have different purposes such as training, outreach and modelling. Come along to help us work on these clusters. If you have yet another cluster that can do with two days of hacking, contact us and perhaps it too can be included:
- CarpentriesOffline: RockPi cluster
- Jeremy’s DRIFT “Visible HPC” training cluster
- Sadie's CATS cluster
- CarpentriesOffline: Pixie RPi 4 cluster
- CarpentriesOffline RPi 5 cluster
CarpentriesOffline: RockPi Cluster
The RockPi Cluster is made up of six RockPi 4SE Single Board Computers. This cluster is intended to be used when access to an HPC for training purposes is difficult to obtain. This cluster needs the most work. Apart from 3D printing cases and a DIN rail for mounting, no attention has been given to the installation of the software. There are still quite a few unknowns with regards to the operating system and whether the cluster will be able to PXE boot or will need SD cards or SSDs to run from.
Jeremy's DRIFT "Visible HPC" training cluster
CarpentriesOffline: Pixie RPi 4 cluster