http://liliputing.com/2013/07/lilbits-7-23-2013-supercomputers-on-the-cheap.html

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-e...



The picture below is sorta deceptive because each slightly longer than a credit card board is a complete Ubuntu computer and each board has its own 64 core count custom designed superchip on it BESIDES the dual core A9 chip that does the traffic management & graphics and all the other stuff that a computer needs.

Stop and read the goodies up top -- they really ARE building a briefcase (or lunch pail) supercomputer for you to use.

"Once completed, the 64-core version of the Parallella computer would deliver over 90 GFLOPS of performance and would have the the horse power comparable to a theoretical 45 GHz CPU [64 CPU cores * 700MHz] on a board the size of a credit card while consuming only 5 Watts under typical work loads."

And then you stack up the little bitches vertically to get up into the teraflop range using the two expansion connectors per card and four little motherboard spacer screw thingies .....  no case required as the 64 each multi core is RF shielded already.  

Passive air cooling is still good since the each card only pulls 5 watts at max current draw.   The stack pictured below pulls less power than a single Intel I5 or I7 chip by itself.

So, for what you used to pay for a computer, you can build up this thingie at $99 per card up to whatever sort of whacked fantasy you have for a REAL computing power ARM based machine.   And you come up with a clever case to carry it around (say a big cigar box???).

But no, it doesn't run Windows -- it runs Linux like all good supercomputers should do.

So now I have a quandary -- should I buy an $800 Ubuntu PC in my phone or a stack of 8 of these little jewels ?  

Oh, what to do, what to do .....          

And once I built it, what would I ever use it for?

Youre building one?
Fo' Real??

I was just having fun with the thought of computers, which do all sorts of designs on things before a prototype is actually made, in order to save time and money on development.
It would be fun to have a properly designed head on the LS engine.
The LS650 head was purposely made this way for low power use, while the DR650 head was not.
Anyway, it was just a whimsical thought.

Cigar Box Super Computer



Even my long range predictions are getting  drastically improved upon when they come true.    Here is the currently offered $600 four board cluster set that does run Ubuntu in addition to all the major supercomuter programming languages.

Sorry for the slow load on the big detailed pic, but there is a penny below the board so you can see how durn tiny the thing really really is (just slide the slider over to the middle position).

90 gigaflops per board      

Here is a review by an electronics publication, Eetimes.com.

Note:  -- the reporter dude got so excited talking to the man doing this one he's now part of the kickstarter group.

http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=14&doc_id=1286691

This is very cool.  I had thought the Raspberry Pi project was pretty neat, but this is over the top.  I see that there is an HDMI connection.  It wasn't clear: does that imply that there is some kind of graphics capability on the card, or do you have to rsh in or something?  Looks like this would be a blast for someone with time on their hands.

chiguy wrote on 07/24/13 at 18:37:13:



Every card has a A-9 on it to provide HDMI video, I/O and other services.   Every card is a complete PC.   Every card can run Ubuntu by itself (or in parallel with other cards).

If you read just my blurbs about this new stuff - that generally provides just very minimal information.   Links to more complete information are always provided (generally up at the top) but it requires you to click on the links and READ all the stuff therein and click on the links contained inside that stuff to go to new stuff and read that.   It takes some time to get caught up with a new concept like this.

Having done some of that, I would WAIT until the 28nm 64 core Epiphany chipsets are produced (to give that first wave of 16 core Epiphany chips some time to generate all the bugs and driver issues, etc. and to get them all fixed) and to give it time for the Ubuntu version to solidify somewhat.

By then you will also have a good grasp on what practical use the thing will actually be to you -- I get the impression that some real rocket scientists are interested in these things for some heavy duty serious uses.

But these are also the same people who write their own applications in raw code.   They can get past a lot of little speed bumps that would stop you or I stone cold.    We are looking for speed running canned applications and apps, which does not require this level of computing power.   What we need and want is a great balance of CPU speed and GPU speed and balance in the I/O systems to support all that.

This thing is Severely Out of Balance on the CPU side, mega strong on computing and number crunching, but not so hot playing video games I would suspect.

================

But yes, the 8-9 year olds who first learn how to program something simple on a Pi might graduate into something like this by the time they go to college and graduate.   It would be the cat's meow to help you with a doctorate dissertation.

By the time that occurs we will be down at 10nm or better, and the power these things could fling would be 100x more per card than this first one being show at this particular point in time.

=================

Still, it throws "BS on that" to the idea that a bunch of little ARM cores can't parallel process into data crunching numbers that are seriously powerful, equal to or better to far more expensive Intel X86 chips.

The first 64 bit ARM A-53 littles (next summer) will also be a candidate for this sort of power multiplication trick.   8 of them will be quite kick ass compared to the normal software needs for anything you can generally do in Ubuntu Linux or Android.    

And bet on it, somebody is gonna come up with a small slotted rack with metal RF shielded heat spreader "plug in" processor cards that can stack up a lot more than 8 each of the A53 littles per plug in card, making up QUITE A LOT of computing power for, as you can see, for not very much money or space.

They are thinking about it as we speak.

CAD drawings already exist for the rack.

The card format is an industry standard plug in card format, so the connection system is off the shelf for the plug in rack system.  The stuff is just a little "big" for the tiny arm chips on the card, so you can fill the card up with A-53s without stretching the contacts, etc for power carry, etc.

Major data center hardware companies are building this sort of stuff AS WE SPEAK because the raw power savings needed to run the thing is HUGE and you get 4 times that much savings again from not needing the humongous cooling systems that a data center requires today.

Last time I researched it, you could throw away your current IBM or Calexdra or Intel or Dell data center and completely pay for a much more powerful ARM data center inside of one year on the direct energy savings alone.

A one year ROI on a durable good is a no brainer, the bean counters just write you a check on the spot.   They LOVE them one year ROI projects.