News Oracle's New Supercomputer Has 1,060 Raspberry Pis

[Admin]

The software giant showed off a giant computer made out of over 1,000 Raspberry Pi 3 B+ boards.

Oracle's New Supercomputer Has 1,060 Raspberry Pis : Read more

 

[rfeague]

If you're near San Francisco, Oracle has a free "Discover" pass so you can check this out in person. https://www.oracle.com/code-one/register.html

 

[Stokestack]

And not one mention of its performance...

 

[bit_user]

I still don't get the point of it. Was it used to demonstrate some software of theirs? Maybe this "Autonomous Linux"?

 

[bit_user]

And not one mention of its performance...

Yeah, you'd think 4240 ARM Cortex-A53 cores should manage some impressive numbers on some kind of distributed computing benchmark.

However, I expect such a machine is only good for research & testing of distributed computing software. Recent analysis has shown that even the much-improved Pi v4 is not a cost-effective solution for computing at scale:

AoA Analysis Marvell ThunderX2 Equals 190 Raspberry Pi 4

We look at Arm-on-Arm (AoA) performance to see how many Raspberry Pi 4 4GB nodes one Marvell ThunderX2 64 core and 256 thread server replaces and the cost

www.servethehome.com

 

[MeeLee]

Should've gone with those AMLogic S905X tv boxes. They're faster, cheaper, and easier to connect

 

[bit_user]

Should've gone with those AMLogic S905X tv boxes. They're faster, cheaper, and easier to connect

ODROID has a number of AMLogic-based products, their N2 being the latest & greatest. Here's the cheapest version:

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-n2-with-2gbyte-ram/​

 

[MeeLee]

ODROID has a number of AMLogic-based products, their N2 being the latest & greatest. Here's the cheapest version:

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-n2-with-2gbyte-ram/​

The AMLogic TV boards go from $25 a board, and all come with a case, remote, and power supply.
All 3 useless when going all out server.
These units run at ~1,4Ghz, however the $35/unit boards run at 2Ghz (1,8Ghz under full load), using a single 80mm fan @5V (=~0.25W) to cool 5-6 boards.
If you've got money spare, $55/board gets you the 2.2Ghz octacore in big-little configuration. Not many programs use the big cores for sustained load.

One bump higher, $120/board gets you Tegra boards.
I would only recommend them if you're running small GPU loads.
There's currently no Boinc program running on Tegra GPUs.
I wouldn't know why else one would get that many cores...

 

[bit_user]

One bump higher, $120/board gets you Tegra boards.
I would only recommend them if you're running small GPU loads.
There's currently no Boinc program running on Tegra GPUs.
I wouldn't know why else one would get that many cores...

Tegra boards don't support OpenCL. There's no technical justification for it - just a shady move by Nvidia's marketing department.

Anyway, my guess is Tegra either doesn't have enough resources or just that Boinc needs OpenCL.

It's no big loss, though. If you compare specs, Tegra SoCs line up pretty well with Intel's iGPUs. Yes, really. Tegra are only good for their size and power budget, but in absolute compute terms they're not even equal to a GTX 1030.

 

[MeeLee]

Tegra boards don't support OpenCL. There's no technical justification for it - just a shady move by Nvidia's marketing department.

Anyway, my guess is Tegra either doesn't have enough resources or just that Boinc needs OpenCL.

It's no big loss, though. If you compare specs, Tegra SoCs line up pretty well with Intel's iGPUs. Yes, really. Tegra are only good for their size and power budget, but in absolute compute terms they're not even equal to a GTX 1030.

Plus, the CPU is ARM, so you'd only be able to get jobs from Android compatible projects; which only support CPU anyway.