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Parallella board ( http://www.parallella.org/board/ http://www.parallella.org/board/ ) with Gbps FPGA Mezzanine connectors ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_

by slug 11y ago

Parallella board ( http://www.parallella.org/board/ http://www.parallella.org/board/ ) with Gbps FPGA Mezzanine connectors ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_Mezzanine_Card https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA_Mezzanine_Card ). Not in the price range of RPi but much more powerful. You can also try the Beaglebone Black... Also, from the ODROID block diagram, the Ethernet PHY is connected directly to the CPU MAC, afaik the issue is the bad (cost?) choice of the Raspberry Pi...

paulmd 11y ago
I was going to say, Pi isn't really the optimal choice here to begin with. For the same wattage, the Parallela is two orders of magnitude more powerful, but it's a more unusual processor to compute on. The Jetson TK-1 is the other option - an NVIDIA dev board for the Tegra K-1 SoC. It's also not entirely similar to CPU programming, but CUDA GPGPU is a more well-trodden path for HPC. I don't know of any actual switched-fabric mezzanine cards available for the Parallela. If you have a link I'd be very interested. A similar approach would be to exploit a mini PCI-Express connector like the one on the Jetson. The Jetson also has a daughterboard connector available, but my understanding is that it's proprietary and I don't think NVIDIA offers a switched-fabric card.
Quequau 11y ago
Man, I was fully onboard with the Parallella back when it was on Kickstarter but I backed out towards the end once it became clear that they weren't going to be shipping the 64 core devices. To my knowledge there still is no way to connect them together except for the Nic that is integrated into the Zynq SoC. I own a couple of ODROID boards and while the network performance is better than what you'll see on the RPi, it's still nothing to write home about. And that's sorta my whole point... if you're working with large enough problem using these low power boards that you've got to offload compute work to multiple devices, the interconnect fabric has got to be much better than what is commonly available right now.
- detaro 11y ago
  What would be problems where multiple Raspi-like systems are be better than a single more powerful system?
  - Quequau 11y ago
    Personally I'm not sure there are any, at least as things stand today. However, I'm fairly convinced that future systems are not going to be powerful monolithic systems but instead large collections of low-power cooperative compute units. It's not a huge stretch to claim that these exercises are worthwhile efforts to learn how to best exploit future hardware architectures on hardware that exists and is available for purchase today. I certainly would be happier, assuming limitations like the interconnect fabric were well solved, if a common unit of compute quanta was more along the lines of a €50-99, 10-15 watt, board rather than €1-2K, 1-1.5k watt, server.

by slug 11y ago

paulmd 11y ago

I was going to say, Pi isn't really the optimal choice here to begin with. For the same wattage, the Parallela is two orders of magnitude more powerful, but it's a more unusual processor to compute on. The Jetson TK-1 is the other option - an NVIDIA dev board for the Tegra K-1 SoC. It's also not entirely similar to CPU programming, but CUDA GPGPU is a more well-trodden path for HPC. I don't know of any actual switched-fabric mezzanine cards available for the Parallela. If you have a link I'd be very interested. A similar approach would be to exploit a mini PCI-Express connector like the one on the Jetson. The Jetson also has a daughterboard connector available, but my understanding is that it's proprietary and I don't think NVIDIA offers a switched-fabric card.

Quequau 11y ago

Man, I was fully onboard with the Parallella back when it was on Kickstarter but I backed out towards the end once it became clear that they weren't going to be shipping the 64 core devices. To my knowledge there still is no way to connect them together except for the Nic that is integrated into the Zynq SoC. I own a couple of ODROID boards and while the network performance is better than what you'll see on the RPi, it's still nothing to write home about. And that's sorta my whole point... if you're working with large enough problem using these low power boards that you've got to offload compute work to multiple devices, the interconnect fabric has got to be much better than what is commonly available right now.

detaro 11y ago
What would be problems where multiple Raspi-like systems are be better than a single more powerful system?
- Quequau 11y ago
  Personally I'm not sure there are any, at least as things stand today. However, I'm fairly convinced that future systems are not going to be powerful monolithic systems but instead large collections of low-power cooperative compute units. It's not a huge stretch to claim that these exercises are worthwhile efforts to learn how to best exploit future hardware architectures on hardware that exists and is available for purchase today. I certainly would be happier, assuming limitations like the interconnect fabric were well solved, if a common unit of compute quanta was more along the lines of a €50-99, 10-15 watt, board rather than €1-2K, 1-1.5k watt, server.