My idea was not to make a computational speed demon, but more to see if it can be done with cheap boards. I’ve done the mini-ITX cluster (with wireless 802.11B, no less) starting with Knoppix Live-CD, and it was educational.
James Lux, P.E. Task Manager, DHFR Space Testbed Jet Propulsion Laboratory 4800 Oak Grove Drive, MS 161-213 Pasadena CA 91109 +1(818)354-2075 +1(818)395-2714 (cell) On 1/28/17, 10:53 AM, "Charlie Peck" <charl...@cs.earlham.edu> wrote: > >> On Jan 28, 2017, at 10:04, Lux, Jim (337C) <james.p....@jpl.nasa.gov> >>wrote: > >> On 1/28/17, 6:39 AM, "Skylar Thompson" <skylar.thomp...@gmail.com> >>wrote: >> >>> On 01/27/2017 12:14 PM, Lux, Jim (337C) wrote: >>>> The pack of Beagles do have local disk storage (there¹s a 2GB flash on >>>> board with a Debian image that it boots from). >>>> >>>> The LittleFe depends on the BCDD (i.e. ³CD rom with cluster image², >>>> actually a USB stick) which is the sort of thing I was hoping for, but >>>> it >>>> is x86. >>>> OTOH, maybe that¹s a pattern to start with. the BCDD also runs out of >>>> RAM, which may or may not be a good model. >>>> >>>> An interesting challenge >>> >>> BCCD actually does support a "liberated" mode (RAM disk copied to >>> persistent storage). We're also not tied to x86 - we actually used to >>> have a PPC port, and are considering supporting ARM now that there's >>> some educational-scale HPC platforms (small multi-core boards w/ 2+GB >>> RAM, GPGPU, wifi, on-board wired Ethernet) available. >>> >>> Skylar >> Yes, I saw that.. > >The LittleFe project has tried to build systems with reasonable balance >between CPU, RAM (quantity and throughput), and network speeds so that >even though you were working in a small environment the general patterns >of speed-up and scaling that you observed would hold when you moved to >“big iron”. Until very recently that meant that the smallest form-factor >board we could use was mini-ITX, nothing smaller supported multiple cores >and gigabit Ethernet. More recently we have looked for on-board >accelerator support as well. Now that boards like the Asus Tinker [1] >board are coming out we may be able to reduce size and cost >significantly. > >charlie > _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
