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Re: [LUG] Raspberry Pi now 100% Open Source on the ARM side

 

On 24/10/12 15:49, Gordon Henderson wrote:
On Wed, 24 Oct 2012, tom wrote:

If you want a cool cluster try the http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone?ref=home_popular
I want one!

Hm. I don't particularly agree with their pitch... For example, over 20 years ago I was working with a company building what we now know as clusters.. It's not a new concept. Biggest one I helped build at the time: http://unicorn.drogon.net/cs2.gif That had 256 compute boards each with a dual processor sparc and 128MB of RAM...

https://projects.drogon.net/a-box-of-200-raspberry-pis/

10 years ago I worked with a company who developed a general purpose plug-in pci/pcie card - 96 cores on it - under 10 watts a chip (they put 2 on a single plug-in card) see http://www.clearspeed.com/

So the concept isn't new. Making it affordable and "open" is...

The problem then and now still is: How do you program the things? The question we were always asked went along the lines of: I have this 30 year old FORTRAN program - make it go faster with more data ...

Want to play with multi-cores on a chip today? Buy one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_Propeller

e.g. http://www.xgamestation.com/view_product.php?id=51

Gordon

The parallela is programmable in C/C++ so no need to learn a new language and last time I looked multicore stiff was pretty easy on C++ and most of the apps I'd like to run on it are in C/C++ and easy to mod for multiprocessor running with a compile switch. Clearspeed don’t give a price so you have to ask them - I tend not to bother with that approach - you spend more on salesman time than you do on product. The parallax is pretty slow - about 1/10th the speed of one core of my cpu on this desktop.
Tom te tom te tom

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