3 ms·

You have a point, but I think there is a reasonable midpoint that Talos missed altogether. RISC-V's move towards RPi/Arduino style mini-systems lets them get a

by abeyer 9y ago

You have a point, but I think there is a reasonable midpoint that Talos missed altogether. RISC-V's move towards RPi/Arduino style mini-systems lets them get a market going at a price point that has some chance to get some uptake early, and hopefully grow from there. Talos seemed amazing, and I was always fond of the ppc/power architecture and wished for something more modern than an old G5 mac, but $7k for a desktop is just more than even most early adopters are willing to do.

orionblastar 9y ago
That was the Apple Lisa's folly. It cost too much than most early adopters wanted to pay. The PPC was a good brand but Intel out innovated them making faster x86 chips cheaper than PPC makers could. Apple had to move to Intel to compete with Intel PCs running Windows or Linux. Amiga still uses PPC but they are expensive. Arm chips are so cheap to make that there is the $5 Raspberry PI Zero cheapest computer on a chip tech. Risc-V would have to be priced like the Arm chips are, or else there would be no benefit to use them unless you like paying more for an open source chip that is free as in freedom and more expensive.
- wand3r 9y ago
  I am curious as a total novice why chips and why now? As you said ARM is cheap. For price to performance I don't see why there aren't multi-motherboards coming out. Someone made a 10 raspberry pi MoBo which if it is cost effective would be easier than a cluster. I think it would be awesome if that was scaleable but I am sure there is a reason. It would be cool and save space making a cluster out of 4 of those boards rather than 40 rPis
  - raarts 9y ago
    10 raspberry pi MoBo? Do you have a link for that?
    - wand3r 9y ago
      It was actually 16 http://hackaday.com/2016/01/25/raspberry-pi-zero-cluster-packs-a-punch/ http://hackaday.com/2016/01/25/raspberry-pi-zero-cluster-pac...
  - dom0 9y ago
    Toy SoCs, like those used in almost every single-board computer, have bad I/O, which makes them poorly suited to general-purpose clustering. Also, general-purpose clustering is not something people strive to bother with. Especially not at a performance level that is as low as a bunch of Raspis.
- dom0 9y ago
  > Amiga Which incidentally uses the more than ten year old PA6T-1682M which has been on life-support for the entirety of its existence.

by abeyer 9y ago

orionblastar 9y ago

That was the Apple Lisa's folly. It cost too much than most early adopters wanted to pay. The PPC was a good brand but Intel out innovated them making faster x86 chips cheaper than PPC makers could. Apple had to move to Intel to compete with Intel PCs running Windows or Linux. Amiga still uses PPC but they are expensive. Arm chips are so cheap to make that there is the $5 Raspberry PI Zero cheapest computer on a chip tech. Risc-V would have to be priced like the Arm chips are, or else there would be no benefit to use them unless you like paying more for an open source chip that is free as in freedom and more expensive.

wand3r 9y ago
I am curious as a total novice why chips and why now? As you said ARM is cheap. For price to performance I don't see why there aren't multi-motherboards coming out. Someone made a 10 raspberry pi MoBo which if it is cost effective would be easier than a cluster. I think it would be awesome if that was scaleable but I am sure there is a reason. It would be cool and save space making a cluster out of 4 of those boards rather than 40 rPis
- raarts 9y ago
  10 raspberry pi MoBo? Do you have a link for that?
  - wand3r 9y ago
    It was actually 16 http://hackaday.com/2016/01/25/raspberry-pi-zero-cluster-packs-a-punch/ http://hackaday.com/2016/01/25/raspberry-pi-zero-cluster-pac...
- dom0 9y ago
  Toy SoCs, like those used in almost every single-board computer, have bad I/O, which makes them poorly suited to general-purpose clustering. Also, general-purpose clustering is not something people strive to bother with. Especially not at a performance level that is as low as a bunch of Raspis.
dom0 9y ago
> Amiga Which incidentally uses the more than ten year old PA6T-1682M which has been on life-support for the entirety of its existence.