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Show HN: Turing Pi 2 – a compact ARM cluster with 32 GB RAM

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Re: Show HN: Turing Pi 2 – a compact ARM cluster with 32 GB RAM

#41

Post by barumi »

ianhowson wrote: post #40
barumi wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be hard pressed to find an old laptop with 32GB of RAM, and a laptop doesn't provide the same operational conditions experienced by a cluster of 4 computers communicating over a network connection. Scaling horizontally presents entirely new classes of challenges that aren't experienced while scaling vertically.

Couldn't you buy four 10 year old laptops?

Anyone can buy a brand new raspberry pi 4 with 4GB of RAM for around 50€, which fits on the palm of your hand. You can even get them delivered to your doorstep with a few mouse clicks.

The same can't really be said for 10 year old laptops.

Re: Show HN: Turing Pi 2 – a compact ARM cluster with 32 GB RAM

#42

Post by nsky-world »

ianhowson wrote: post #39
nsky-world wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your question what's the advantage of cluster comparing to one processor unit?

You could get an off-the-shelf x86 machine in the same form factor and run the cluster nodes in VMs, for instance. Maybe you could argue that four RPis on a network are more reliable than a single x86 with VMs, but that doesn't seem to be the point of this machine.

That's one of the point too. We have industrial customers who deploy apps in the places with a limited access to the internet, so increased reliability something important to them. Another thing is that they can host apps with different purposes on different nodes in containers. Besides that all the infrastructure could be managed with a tool like Kubernetes and organically work with existing cloud infrastructure. And the last but not least in a cluster like that you can combine general purpose modules with accelerated compute modules.

Re: Show HN: Turing Pi 2 – a compact ARM cluster with 32 GB RAM

#43

Post by rasz »

barumi wrote: post #37
rasz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Main use case might be doing whatever you would do on 10 year old laptop reused to be your home server. Similar performance, similar power usage.

You'd be hard pressed to find an old laptop with 32GB of RAM, and a laptop doesn't provide the same operational conditions experienced by a cluster of 4 computers communicating over a network connection. Scaling horizontally presents entirely new classes of challenges that aren't experienced while scaling vertically.

ThinkPad W530 fits the bill quite well. Broken screen puts it at around $100-150, $300 gets you fully working one. Less tyhan 4 CM4 modules, and what about Turing Pi 2 case? power supply?

>Scaling horizontally presents entirely new classes of challenges that aren't experienced while scaling vertically.

Pay more for challenges? If you really want to fight with bad scaling just run a VM.

Re: Show HN: Turing Pi 2 – a compact ARM cluster with 32 GB RAM

#44

Post by rasz »

barumi wrote: post #41
ianhowson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't you buy four 10 year old laptops?

Anyone can buy a brand new raspberry pi 4 with 4GB of RAM for around 50€, which fits on the palm of your hand. You can even get them delivered to your doorstep with a few mouse clicks. The same can't really be said for 10 year old laptops.

Yes, for the former you have to walk across the room and dig in the closet, optionally ask friends.

Re: Show HN: Turing Pi 2 – a compact ARM cluster with 32 GB RAM

#48

Post by InvaderFizz »

tra3 wrote: post #35

Forgive me if this is a stupid question; but I see that it has SATA support. Does that mean this can be shoehorned into NAS service? I have an irrational desire to create a cluster, but I would like to use it for something practical like a NAS. Bad idea?

Yes, but I would opt for the newly released HC4 if two drives were fine. If you are looking for four to five drives, I'm sure someone will make a PCB at some point that uses A PCIe connected SATA controller.

Price becomes a real problem though. The Pi foundation carrier board is dirt cheap, everyone else's boards seem to be a lot of money. Probably due to low volume.

Re: Show HN: Turing Pi 2 – a compact ARM cluster with 32 GB RAM

#49

Post by tra3 »

InvaderFizz wrote: post #48
tra3 wrote: post #35

Forgive me if this is a stupid question; but I see that it has SATA support. Does that mean this can be shoehorned into NAS service? I have an irrational desire to create a cluster, but I would like to use it for something practical like a NAS. Bad idea?

Yes, but I would opt for the newly released HC4 if two drives were fine. If you are looking for four to five drives, I'm sure someone will make a PCB at some point that uses A PCIe connected SATA controller. Price becomes a real problem though. The Pi foundation carrier board is dirt cheap, everyone else's boards seem to be a lot of money. Probably due to low volume.

Yeah that's what I kinda figured. It's interesting but doesn't make sense from a financial standpoint.
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