Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Creating Raspberry Pi clusters is a popular hacker activity. Bitscope has been commercializing these clusters for a bit now and last year they created a cluster of 750 Pis for Los Alamos National Labs. You might wonder what an institution know for supercomputers wants with a cluster of Raspberry Pis. Turns out it is tough to justify taking a real high-speed cluster down just to test software. Now developers can run small test programs with a large number of CPU cores without requiring time on the big iron.
[...] The system is modular with each module holding 144 active nodes, 6 spares, and a single cluster manager. This all fits in a 6U rack enclosure. Bitscope points out that you could field 1,000 nodes in 42U and the power draw — including network fabric and cooling — would be about 6 kilowatts. That sounds like a lot, but for a 1,000 node device, that's pretty economical. The cost isn't bad, either, running about $150,000 for 1,000 nodes. Sure, that's a lot too but not compared to the alternatives.
Huh. That's actually not a bad idea for sounding so silly at face value.
Source: https://hackaday.com/2018/01/24/firing-up-750-raspberry-pis/
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 25 2018, @04:48AM (1 child)
Unless you verified yourself, you can't say 'I know...' in good faith.
There used to be some guy here who had something like 'Prove all things...' as a signature. You remember him? -discrete smile-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Thursday January 25 2018, @05:24AM
Oh, so right...
Caught me making yet another assumption... that Raspberry PI is completely understood outside some corporate environment which jealously guards some of the inner code... blobs... I do not mind it being copyrighted as much as I mind being kept ignorant of its intentions and what it will do when executed.
I feel about as uncomfortable running blobs as signing legally binding documents whose author has inserted - oh what do you call those things that businesses print when they want to say one thing*, cause it looks good, but don't want to be held to it. Like an undefined pointer that leaves the door open for all sorts of trouble.
*we reserve to change anything at anytime for any reason. We are a business, you are not. Trust us - we are trustworthy. We say so. We printed a shield of trust on our document as certification of trust. If you disagree with anything we pull on you, you agree to pay our legal fees to fight you. Early termination fees will apply. This instrument is legally binding as codified into law by your congressmen.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]