[SOLVED] Raspbery Pi cluster performance

[Proprietary Software]

I am interested in setting up a Raspberry Pi 3 cluster. But how much processing power would I obtain if I were to set up a 16 PI cluster? Would it be more powerful than an i5 at least?

 

[Alabalcho]

You can't draw a compare chart between a cluster (of any type), and single CPU. There are very different loads these computing environments are designed for.

What do you intend to run on the cluster? You know, Crysis is out of consideration 😉

 

[Proprietary Software]

I don't have anything in mind for it yet...
I know it would use a different computing method, but can I have a general idea of how powerful it would be? I don't want to build something that is utterly useless. 🤔

 

[kanewolf]

Not a "different computing method" but completely different software. Unless you have software written to be run on a cluster, it won't be useful. PI clusters are primarily cluster teaching tools. The low network bandwidth between nodes and the limited memory on a PI don't make them too useful as "production" clusters. If you want a physically small set of Linux hosts that you can do experiments with, it is a useful tool.
You have to remember that you have a set of discrete hosts when you have a cluster. Not a single larger host, but a bunch of small hosts.