Building A 96-Core Ubuntu ARM Solar-Powered Cluster

[mitcoes]

I would like to see a budget with total costs

And a benchmark vs a similar AMD and Intel budget machine

And another benchmark vs a similar CPU & GPU power - specs - x86_64 machine

This second one with prices, and power and of course the annual electricity bill for both systems and the number of solar panels needed for both systems.

As there are not ARM desktop array computers with similar CPU&GPU power - specs - machines - AT GENERAL STORES -, and having no need for funs, - ANNOYING NOISE - a project to make a desktop ARM computer with enought power to perform as actual AMD or Intel desktop computers and gaming computers - high end ones - it would be a great idea to make a how to - for human beings - to make a home one with panda boards, and in a near future ARM desktop clusters for home and gaming computers.

[SolarNet]

OK, we will put some of that comparison data together... probably over this coming weekend. We have tried a lot of experiments with outdoor supercomputing so we should be able to drum that data up.

We looked at the Variscite 4460 SOM a while back but we don't have any particular expertise with SODIMM. Are you only using that bus for power or is there a practical limitation to how many modules you can chain up that way?

As you probably know, Alex Ramirez (or just A-Ram in Barcelona) is espousing the Tegra board for his approach to hyperdense ARM servers. The Pandaboard is about .5U because of it's unique NIC arrangement, stacked over the USB, so you have to try out some exotic geometries to get better density. The MontBlanc board appears to be less than that... I guess these are the QSeven form factor? Check out from about 1:45 onwards at...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cZdT...ature=youtu.be

[allaun]

The video becomes hilarious. Some awesome quotes:
Benchmark certificates for justice
Film architecture is substantially different substantial is substantial
People disclousure experiment
It goes on. On a serious note, I'd suggest having captioning enabled for those that are hearing impaired.

[ChuckAKnight]

How did you bootup all 96 of the boards? Did you use a remote boot machanism like tftp?

[SolarNet]

We ended up going with local SD card. We had some early success with
http://pandaboard.org/content/usb-do...otloader-omap4
but then discovered that it wouldn't work with large usb hubs like
http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/eec...eatured_2_eecf
probably because you are transitting 2 USB chipsets on most of your pairwise client connections... we were going to revisit that issue some day because it would be neat if we could get USBNet completely working (from boot onwards)...