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What's "underpowered" about it? 32 bit processor running at 144 MHz (so 144 MIPS, less branch or memory stalls). That's similar to a Pentium 100 or PPC 601/100
by brucehoult 2y ago
What's "underpowered" about it? 32 bit processor running at 144 MHz (so 144 MIPS, less branch or memory stalls). That's similar to a Pentium 100 or PPC 601/100. And it's using 20 mW, vs about 10 W for those, so a factor of 500 better in energy use.
Certainly faster CPUs exist, but you don't always need faster, and for what it does it is pretty efficient -- and for a suitably embarrassingly parallel task 256 of them are still low power (about 5W).
- dmitrygr 2y agounderpowered compared to what is meant by "cluster" or "GHz"
- numpad0 2y agoSaving web searches: 144 MIPS x 256 processors = 36864 raw MIPS, or about twice as fast as an Xbox 360, or fast as up to mid-90s supercomputer, if we utterly completely ignore obvious node interconnect problem.
- brucehoult 2y agoThere are useful things that don't need a lot of interconnect speed. For example all of those XYZ@home projects (SETI, primes ...), or finding the hash for bitcoin blocks. Those just need aggregate speed and low energy use per computation. This particular CPU might or might not have instructions needed to make those particular computations efficient, of course.
- jononor 2y agoHow many of them can be done with 2 kB RAM per node? ;) I like this project. It is not very useful - but it does not need to be, nor does it try :D
- dathinab 2y agothis things still need "enough" per-node performance, which potentially involve multiple cores with fast interconnects and definitely involves having enough RAM and cache etc. also while the latency for @home projects are higher the bandwidth of your internet upload/download might be faster then what that cluster has effectively (due to the shared bus) through this doesn't mean anything in the end the project wasn't about creating a faster DIY special purpose compute system at home or anything like that it's about a cool challenging and inspiring tech hobby project
- theamk 2y agoit's 20KB (0.02MB, 0.00002GB) data RAM per CPU You are not going to get anything useful supercomputer-wise with that much RAM.