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Cheap Supercomputers: LANL has 750-node Raspberry Pi Development Clusters
One of the more esoteric announcements to come out of SuperComputing 17, an annual conference on high-performance computing, is that one of the largest US scientific institutions is investing in Raspberry Pi-based clusters to aid in development work. The Los Alamos National Laboratory's [LANL] High Performance Computing Division now has access to 750-node Raspberry Pi clusters as part of the first step towards a development program to assist in programming much larger machines.
The platform at LANL leverages a modular cluster design from BitScope Designs, with five rack-mount Bitscope Cluster Modules, each with 150 Raspberry Pi boards with integrated network switches. With each of the 750 chips packing four cores, it offers a 3000-core highly parallelizable platform that emulates an ARM-based supercomputer, allowing researchers to test development code without requiring a power-hungry machine at significant cost to the taxpayer. The full 750-node cluster, running 2-3 W per processor, runs at 1000W idle, 3000W at typical and 4000W at peak (with the switches) and is substantially cheaper, if also computationally a lot slower. After development using the Pi clusters, frameworks can then be ported to the larger scale supercomputers available at LANL, such as Trinity and Crossroads.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Wednesday November 15 2017, @03:24PM (3 children)
It appears that each node has four Pis [bitscope.com] on it. One possibility that stands out right now is using the nodes for high I/O work, perhaps for certain sorts of real time signal and image processing.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday November 15 2017, @07:04PM (2 children)
Of course this being a developmental platform, the real intent is to prototype software.
But the spin off from BitScope is likely to find a hobbyist market, as well as programmer training.
But not at those prices. At $500-$800 they would get snapped up in large numbers, even if they only had 4 Pi's on board.
Building these in quantity is going to bid the price of Pi's up a lot, initially, but then the price should drop substantially below the current price.
The Pi guys, especially Eben Upton, CEO have said they manage Pi production very closely so as not to get stuck with unsaleable inventory since there seems to be a new pico-board computer released every month by various vendors.
Doing this they have managed to keep the Pi price of older models unusually high compared to the newer models.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Wednesday November 15 2017, @08:28PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by t-3 on Wednesday November 15 2017, @09:42PM
Hardkernel (odroid), recently announced a similar offering - http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G150152508314 [hardkernel.com] 8G ram, 32 cores, 220$.