PicoCluster is a new type of learning tool. It is designed to mimic a data center environment to make it easy to learn Big Data software as well as distributed and parallel computing principles.
Our goal is to make it easy to learn most any category of IT, but more specifically focused on Big Data. This would apply to individual IT professionals, businesses looking for internal training, college and high school students. We see many parents purchasing these for home use as well.
PicoCluster also works well as a business tool. Think of software developers writing a new Hadoop or machine learning algorithm. Software optimization. It if runs well on a PicoCluster, it'll scream on a full system. QA always needs more environments to work with. PicoClusters are a perfect fix here. Even for offloading other business process tasks. Start a job on a PicoCluster when you leave for home and have the results when you get back to work in the morning.
PicoClusters are small, inexpensive and are extremely power efficient. A 5 node PicoCluster consumes less than 15 watts of power. That's about $20/year of electricity. They come in 3 node, 5 node, 10 node, 20 node clusters. We also have a monster 100 node cluster that's available!
The product is based on clustering multiple mico-computers together in a case along with power and networking capabilities. A 5-node PicoCluster contains 5 Raspberry PI 2s, power distribution and an 8-port network switch. Ports are exposed to outside of the case so you can plug in a keyboard, mouse, mouse, and network.
We're launching via Kickstarter in early June 2015. Please go to the web site or find us on twitter, facebook or kickstarter.