The Raspberry Pi Education Mine: For Teaching Engineering and Computer Science Students Concepts Like, Computer Clusters, Parallel Computing, and Distributed Computing

This paper introduces a simple method of building a prototype cluster of the Raspberry Pi. The Pi cluster is a powerful-low-cost tool for teaching the complex concepts of parallel and distributed computing to undergraduate E&CS students. The performance of the presented Pi cluster is assessed using two different applications of face recognition and image encryption, which are computationally expensive. The paper explains how to compare the performance of the Pi cluster against a traditional high performance traditional cluster. The comparison is designed to help undergraduate students understand the state of the art of the clusters. The paper explains how the Pi clusters fit in the CS curriculum at Old Dominion University. The presented project-based learning is an effective teaching approach that helps the learning of struggling engineering/computer science students from minorities and women groups at ODU.