Teaching parallel programming and HPC is a difficult task. There is a large number of sophisticated hardware and software components, each complex on their own and often showing non-intuitive interaction when used in combination. We consider education in HPC among the more difficult topics in computer science due to the fact that larger distributed memory systems are ubiquitous yet inaccessible and intangible to students. In this work, we present the Cluster Coffer, a miniature cluster computer based on 16 ARM compute boards that we believe is suitable for reducing the entry barrier to HPC in teaching and public outreach. We discuss our design goals for providing a portable, inexpensive system that is easy to maintain and repair. We outline the implementation path we took in terms of hardware and software, in order to provide others with the information required to reproduce and extend our work. Finally, we present two use cases for which the Cluster Coffer has been used multiple times, and will continue to be used in the upcoming years.

教授并行编程和HPC是一项艰巨的任务。有大量复杂的硬件和软件组件，每个组件本身都很复杂，并且在组合使用时通常显示出非直觉的交互作用。由于大型分布式存储系统无处不在，但对学生来说却是无形的，因此我们将HPC教育视为计算机科学中较困难的主题之一。在这项工作中，我们介绍了Cluster Coffer，这是一个基于16个ARM计算板的微型集群计算机，我们认为它适合于减少HPC在教学和公共宣传中的进入壁垒。我们讨论我们的设计目标，以提供一种易于维护和维修的便携式，廉价系统。我们概述了我们在硬件和软件方面的实现途径，为了向他人提供复制和扩展我们的工作所需的信息。最后，我们介绍了两个使用案例，它们已经被多次使用，并将在未来几年中继续使用。