So where do I buy one?
Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer
151–160 of 171 posts
Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're approaching the question from a different angle. The key word is SoC. Think embedded performance, rather than desktop performance. Just to give you a few examples... OpenCV for robotics platforms, cheap low-power SDR capable of transmission, SIP encryption and compression. One might argue you could stick a GPU in a robot, I'd personally want something better suited to the task (lower power).
I fundamentally disagree that SoCs are different than desktop technology. They're just smaller. High-end architectures are already driven to be as power-efficient as possible, so when you cut them down they're still efficient. For example, Kabini is an "SoC" that has the same GCN CU as a "desktop" Kaveri or a discrete Radeon.
This is wrong. For example, low-power embedded ARM chips are not simply cut-down high-end x86 chips. If you optimize for power usage instead of raw performance, there are many design decisions that come out differently, resulting in a design that is qualitatively different and not just "scaled down powerhorse".
Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
ask what future things having something like this on a SoC would enable. I asked that and came up blank. And I haven't seen answers from anyone else, either. Has Adapteva themselves shown any examples where their chip beats a GPU?
One interesting application could be realtime 3D rendering because this is an area with small overhead. I know that the chip does not support floating point but that could be simulated by fixed point integers. I agree with Shamanmuni that the great advantage of Parallela chip over GPUs is open source (full documentation). It's a practical study tool for real parallel programming tasks that many students can afford.
It supports floating point. Just not double precision floating point. That's good enough for 3D rendering.
Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer
#154I'm really disappointed about how shallow the discussions about Adapteva are, and have been, on HN. To remind everyone, the H = hacker. This device is a godsend, as far as I'm concerned. For the first time ever I get fully documented access to compute array on chip. No the architecture wasn't designed for anything specific, like graphics, but that means I don't get bogged down in details I don't care about, like some…
writing toy DSL to asm compilers Sounds like an ideal use of Forth.
Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer
#155As someone who uses supercomputers, I'm not sure I entirely understand the market of this product. It's really cool and I'd love to have one to tinker with, but due to its high parallelization, I see no benefit of using this over a graphics card. I'm not sure if $99 can get you a GPU that reaches 90 GFlops though... perhaps that's where the benefit lies. EDIT: After reviewing their website, I notice they state > One…
It runs MPI and has a GBit Ethernet interface. They've already bult an 8-node demo cluster.
The Zynq 7020 arguably has enough spare capacity and I/O ports to implement a 3d torus with ~GByte/s throughput for each link.
Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer
#156As someone who uses supercomputers, I'm not sure I entirely understand the market of this product. It's really cool and I'd love to have one to tinker with, but due to its high parallelization, I see no benefit of using this over a graphics card. I'm not sure if $99 can get you a GPU that reaches 90 GFlops though... perhaps that's where the benefit lies. EDIT: After reviewing their website, I notice they state > One…
You can buy an AMD 7750 for $99, which theoretically gives you in the range of 800-900 GFLOPS (single precision).
Each TigerSHARC-like DSP core has 32 kByte embedded memory, and memory-like access to other core's memory space. The system has GBit Ethernet, runs Linux and takes only 2-3 W power.
This is ideal cluster material.
Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer
#157Could you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?
Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer
#158I'm really disappointed about how shallow the discussions about Adapteva are, and have been, on HN. To remind everyone, the H = hacker. This device is a godsend, as far as I'm concerned. For the first time ever I get fully documented access to compute array on chip. No the architecture wasn't designed for anything specific, like graphics, but that means I don't get bogged down in details I don't care about, like some…
I'm really happy that you clarified this for me. I was a bit confused because the newest KickStarter video focuses mainly on a young girl using the computer to surf the web and doesn't really detail anything that has been mentioned in these comments. After reading everything, it seems awesome though.
Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer
#159Epiphany Architecture Reference: http://www.adapteva.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/epiphany_...
Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer
#160usb 3.0 would have been nice