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Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: Pyromania on August 21, 2013, 08:00:20 AM

Title: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: Pyromania on August 21, 2013, 08:00:20 AM
Quote from the link below.

"Move over Raspberry Pi, here comes Adapteva's Parallella, a low-cost parallel chip board for Linux supercomputing."

http://www.zdnet.com/parallella-the-99-linux-supercomputer-7000014036/
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: commodorejohn on August 21, 2013, 09:00:51 AM
Congratulations on completely missing the point of the Raspberry Pi, ZDNet!

Sheez.
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: Duce on August 21, 2013, 09:21:21 AM
How exactly did they miss the point of the Rasp Pi, John?  This board is geared to a completely different audience than the Pi.
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: cunnpole on August 21, 2013, 09:29:07 AM
Quote from: commodorejohn;745636
Congratulations on completely missing the point of the Raspberry Pi, ZDNet!

Sheez.


I love how they still spin the 45Ghz argument. By those standards my old graphics card does 500Ghz on 300 Cuda cores. It's like they think parallel processing is a new thing. It maybe has found a niche in ultra low power parallel computing, but the piss poor journalism goes for the hype instead.
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: MicroStrand on August 21, 2013, 10:13:16 AM
Quote from: cunnpole;745639
It maybe has found a niche in ultra low power parallel computing, but the piss poor journalism goes for the hype instead.
Their price of $99 is only for the minimum configuration, the full price is $199. They say it is intended for research and education at universities. But anyway, the idea to put 16 cores in a SoC is nothing special, and without an operating system plus software, specifically designed for this type of architecture, meaningless.
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: SamuraiCrow on August 21, 2013, 10:13:24 AM
Since they're comparing to a $99 computer, they should compare to the ODroid with its quad-core processor or something else that costs $99 instead!  The RasPi costs about $50 including the powered hub and cabling.
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: cunnpole on August 21, 2013, 11:18:39 AM
Quote from: MicroStrand;745644
They say it is intended for research and education at universities. But anyway, the idea to put 16 cores in a SoC is nothing special, and without an operating system plus software, specifically designed for this type of architecture, meaningless.


Yep, even for that market there are far too many existing motherboards with 16+ onboard Cuda or openCL cores, never mind those of us with dedicated cards. I'd much rather pick up the new 16 core pure arm chips if SoC floats your boat
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: nicholas on August 21, 2013, 01:02:11 PM
Let's all demand OS4/MOS/AROS ports to this thing quickly! ;)
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: Oldsmobile_Mike on August 21, 2013, 05:10:15 PM
I clicked on the link.  As soon as I saw the picture of SJVN as the author, I knew it would be over-hyped Linux crap.  Please don't ever repost an article by this hack again.  Kthxbai.  :(
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: commodorejohn on August 21, 2013, 06:20:15 PM
Quote from: Duce;745637
How exactly did they miss the point of the Rasp Pi, John?  This board is geared to a completely different audience than the Pi.
Yes, exactly. It is geared towards a completely different audience, at more than double the price point, yet somehow the RPi should get ready to "move over" for it?
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: koaftder on August 21, 2013, 06:24:23 PM
Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;745699
I clicked on the link.  As soon as I saw the picture of SJVN as the author, I knew it would be over-hyped Linux crap.  Please don't ever repost an article by this hack again.  Kthxbai.  :(


+1. I've never heard of this author, but CommodoreJohn's comment about the comparison to the rPi prompted me to look up his bio. A history and English major and a career that consists of nothing but slinging words. 100% journalist and 0% hacker.
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: bloodline on August 21, 2013, 07:08:19 PM
Quote from: Pyromania;745632
Quote from the link below.

"Move over Raspberry Pi, here comes Adapteva's Parallella, a low-cost parallel chip board for Linux supercomputing."

http://www.zdnet.com/parallella-the-99-linux-supercomputer-7000014036/
Didn't I already post about this board a few weeks ago? ;)

It's nice, I really like it... But it's a totally different device to the Raspi... Also I've not seen any benchmarks yet to show why this is better than OpenCL on a GPU :)
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: persia on August 21, 2013, 11:24:19 PM
Speaking of intended audience, did the Raspberry Pi even reach it's intended audience of British teenagers wanting to learn programming?
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: Oldsmobile_Mike on August 21, 2013, 11:29:31 PM
All five of them?
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: Gulliver on August 22, 2013, 12:38:11 AM
Quote from: persia;745757
Speaking of intended audience, did the Raspberry Pi even reach it's intended audience of British teenagers wanting to learn programming?


I have a couple of close friends living in Britain, and they say it has become the must have geek toy, and very popular, but unfortunately despite the heavy promotion in the education sector, it hadnt caused a major impact the way they intended with teenagers learning programming.
Maybe it is because teenagers nowadays have so many other things to get distracted with. Things that werent present when we grew up (Internet and hardcore gaming).
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: agami on August 22, 2013, 03:14:29 AM
Quote from: commodorejohn;745714
Yes, exactly. It is geared towards a completely different audience, at more than double the price point, yet somehow the RPi should get ready to "move over" for it?


Wow, talk about judging a book by its cover. You take one statement made in a summary line and pass judgement on the writer, the actual article, and ZDnet as a whole.

And for the rest of you ingnorami out there, it's called flair. The writer and we (most of us) are not laconic fact producing and consuming robots. It's perfectly reasonable to entice your audience with these types of sub-titles.

And 'move over' doesn't mean 'pick out your coffin'. Where RPi was the only game in town in this space now there will be another.

Also, when you take all the facts about the RPi and Parallella you'll find they have a lot of things in common; small size, low price, board only, ARM based, runs Linux, etc. It may not aim for the same audience but it will attract a lot of the same audience.

Man, wandering through the Amiga desert has certainly taken its toll on some of you.
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: commodorejohn on August 22, 2013, 03:41:07 AM
If that line wasn't representative of the article's tone, they shouldn't have used it as a clearly-marked summary of the article. As for ZDnet as a whole, I've seen quite enough of their other output in recent years to feel comfortable making that generalization.

And the RPi hasn't been "the only game in town in this space" pretty much since the RPi came out, just the one with the lowest price; there've been an assload of cheap small ARM boards at similar price points to the Parallella, so I don't know why the journalist thinks that the Parallella is in any particular competition with the RPi specifically.
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: MicroStrand on August 22, 2013, 10:06:55 AM
Quote from: commodorejohn;745781
And the RPi hasn't been "the only game in town in this space" pretty much since the RPi came out, just the one with the lowest price; there've been an assload of cheap small ARM boards at similar price points to the Parallella, so I don't know why the journalist thinks that the Parallella is in any particular competition with the RPi specifically.
You're damn right, there are enough boards with a lot more learning potential, like for example the BeagleBoard xM, PandaBoard ES, or the SBC2100 by IC Nexus. They have not only more interfaces, but provide much more flexibility for software solutions. Sheer computing power is just not all.
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: cunnpole on August 22, 2013, 04:29:33 PM
Quote from: agami;745779
You take one statement made in a summary line and pass judgement on the writer, the actual article, and ZDnet as a whole


I think you'll find there were several factual inaccuracies in that short story and perhaps stupidly I expect people in his position to put a bit of effort into understanding what they are talking about. That wasn't flair, it was incompetence. Have a look at his previous stories for more of the same.
Title: Re: Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer
Post by: vidarh on August 22, 2013, 05:02:45 PM
Quote from: cunnpole;745647
Yep, even for that market there are far too many existing motherboards with 16+ onboard Cuda or openCL cores, never mind those of us with dedicated cards. I'd much rather pick up the new 16 core pure arm chips if SoC floats your boat


GPU cores are not general purpose. Completely different type of beast. And this is the *first* step in scaling this up, to let people get familiar with the programming model. Their roadmap is for hundreds of cores per chip based on *current* manufacturing methods.

I'm looking greatly forward to mine to play with...

And it's worth pointing out for those going on about the price that this is a dual core Zynq SOC (ARM + FPGA in one package) + the Epihany chips. Most Zynq dev boards are priced higher than what you get the full package for from Parallela.

If you want an rPi, then you should get an rPi. They're not competing for the same things at all.