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Tiny Titan

tinytitan.github.io

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Re: Tiny Titan

#31
post #4

More descriptive title, e.g. ‘Tiny Titan, a $1,000 classroom supercomputer’ would be helpful.

How does this cost $1,000? The budget is clearly not being used efficiently. The only computing part, the 9 RPi's are 315$ all together. So what, 685$ of plastic and accessories. Hmm....

I'm not sure about historical prices of the components, but this article is from 2015, as noted in the footer and in the PDF guide linked at the top.

Re: Tiny Titan

#32
Probably not clear from the pictures, but the Tiny Titan sits on the observation deck directly in front of the actual Titan supercomputer at ORNL. It's used as a hands on demonstration when tours are being given about how supercomputers work.

A useful tool for explaining the basic concepts in a tangible way.

Re: Tiny Titan

#33
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 bucks per USB LED Light, 15 bucks per USB cable... they don't choose cheap components.

Yeah they could save a bunch on those; the USB LEDs are things they could make themselves, stick them into the gpio pins. Actually they don't need those. If your parts are more expensive than the rPI itself, you're not going to need it. Those cases aren't cheap either.

It needs to be presentable and easy to understand. Whilst those things may not be required for someone with a basic understanding of parallel computing, they probably make it easier to explain the concepts to someone going in with zero knowledge.

Considering it's sat in front of a Titan super computer, it was probably easy to get the thousand dollar budget considering how much went into the box behind it :P

Re: Tiny Titan

#34
Why not just simulate the computer on a single desktop PC using a bunch of virtual machines?

It's less costly, and all of the concepts are the same (except for connecting them using cables, but that's only a plus if you like the physical experience over abstraction, in which case perhaps computing is not really your thing to start with).

Re: Tiny Titan

#35
post #13
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this cost $1,000? The budget is clearly not being used efficiently. The only computing part, the 9 RPi's are 315$ all together. So what, 685$ of plastic and accessories. Hmm....

(joking) gotta get that rgb man

(If you have to preface a statement with the fact that you're joking, either it's not a good joke, it's not the correct time/place/context for a joke, or both)

Re: Tiny Titan

#36
post #26

I'm thinking about building one, but with Pi Zero's and USB networking. The ClusterHAT guy wrote software to netboot the nodes off a cluster controller's SD through the USB network. With that, you don't even need an SDcard for each node. I was thinking about also adding a LED bar with one LED for each GPU SIMD element, refreshing a couple times per second and lighting up for the units used above a certain threshold.…

"With that, you don't even need an SDcard for each node."

neat stuff, i didn't know that, going to read up.

Re: Tiny Titan

#37
post #34

Why not just simulate the computer on a single desktop PC using a bunch of virtual machines? It's less costly, and all of the concepts are the same (except for connecting them using cables, but that's only a plus if you like the physical experience over abstraction, in which case perhaps computing is not really your thing to start with).

The answer is right there at the top of the article: that it's for the classroom.

Re: Tiny Titan

#38
Wow. That is a great post - I have a voracious 12 yo grandson who is now all about computing, math and 'being a developer/engineer'. He asked last night if I had any cool projects that we could do. Yes. Yes I do. Thanks for this post!

Re: Tiny Titan

#39
post #34

Why not just simulate the computer on a single desktop PC using a bunch of virtual machines? It's less costly, and all of the concepts are the same (except for connecting them using cables, but that's only a plus if you like the physical experience over abstraction, in which case perhaps computing is not really your thing to start with).

The answer is right there at the top of the article: that it's for the classroom.

Yes, so what will the target-audience learn over the virtual experience? Other than that they can't run this at home because of the cost?
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