Dalek: An Unconventional and Energy-Aware Heterogeneous Cluster

TL;DR

Dalek is a cost-effective, energy-aware heterogeneous cluster using consumer-grade hardware, enabling versatile research in performance and energy efficiency for computer science applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel energy monitoring platform and demonstrates the use of consumer-grade hardware for high-performance, energy-aware computing research.

Findings

High-precision energy monitoring at milliwatt resolution

Synthetic benchmark results demonstrating performance levels

Cost-effective hardware setup for heterogeneous computing

Abstract

Dalek is an experimental compute cluster designed to evaluate the performance of heterogeneous, consumer-grade hardware for software design, prototyping, and algorithm development. In contrast to traditional computing centers that rely on costly, server-class components, Dalek integrates CPUs and GPUs typically found in mini-PCs, laptops, and gaming desktops, providing a cost-effective yet versatile platform. This document details the cluster's architecture and software stack, and presents results from synthetic benchmarks. Furthermore, it introduces a custom energy monitoring platform capable of delivering 1000 averaged samples per second with milliwatt-level resolution. This high-precision monitoring capability enables a wide range of energy-aware research experiments in applied Computer Science.