Wrangler, Levi, whatever takes your fancy..
This post is part 3 of a bunch of posts. Part One was here and Part Two was here
Not in the market for a NAS box? Don't want to store your music on it and play them via the audio out? Well, let's look at a more high-end market. Supercomputing.
"Supercomputing??", I hear you scream in dismay, "but you can't supercompute with a sub-GHz processor with no L2 cache!!!".
IBM begs to differ.
The current world leading supercomputer is BlueGene/L - a monster that IBM have created by linking together 130,000 or so embedded PowerPC processors. Each node has two 700MHz 440-series PowerPC SoC's, and you can fit 64 of these nodes in a "rack". They are so low-power (averaging a watt or two, each node, at full use) that they can be packed in very high density, giving a very very high computing power per square foot of used space, and don't require a personal nuclear power plant to operate. The exact specifications of a BlueGene solution are at the IBM website. It should be noted that the #2 fastest supercomputer in the world is in fact another BlueGene, which simply has less processors in it's configuration. The BlueGene experimental prototype ran 8192 500MHz PowerPC processors and is STILL ranked as #22 (above it are yet 3 other BlueGene solutions).
I am not saying someone will buy 200,000 EFIKA boards just so they can get to #1 in the supercomputing list, although I certainly will not be pulling them away from signing that cheque. But the possibility for a very cheap, very effective cluster solution presents itself. There are lots of clusters in the world at universities and laboratories which have been built by students and scientists alike dumpster-diving for parts. An old Compaq 386 here, an RM 486 there, and the occasional but rare Pentium II perhaps at such heady clock rates as 266MHz.
Why not get out from that dumpster, put your white coats in the laundry and use EFIKA instead?
The MPC5200 is efficient; 400MHz of computing power, at around 1W. No fans. No noise. No ugly beige ATX cases and searching for ancient ZIP RAM modules to put in them. In fact the EFIKA measures about 15cm by 10cm so instead of taking up the side wall of your office building your makeshift cluster, you can simply clear a pile of papers off your desk and use that space.
Not in the market for a NAS box? Don't want to store your music on it and play them via the audio out? Well, let's look at a more high-end market. Supercomputing.
"Supercomputing??", I hear you scream in dismay, "but you can't supercompute with a sub-GHz processor with no L2 cache!!!".
IBM begs to differ.
The current world leading supercomputer is BlueGene/L - a monster that IBM have created by linking together 130,000 or so embedded PowerPC processors. Each node has two 700MHz 440-series PowerPC SoC's, and you can fit 64 of these nodes in a "rack". They are so low-power (averaging a watt or two, each node, at full use) that they can be packed in very high density, giving a very very high computing power per square foot of used space, and don't require a personal nuclear power plant to operate. The exact specifications of a BlueGene solution are at the IBM website. It should be noted that the #2 fastest supercomputer in the world is in fact another BlueGene, which simply has less processors in it's configuration. The BlueGene experimental prototype ran 8192 500MHz PowerPC processors and is STILL ranked as #22 (above it are yet 3 other BlueGene solutions).
I am not saying someone will buy 200,000 EFIKA boards just so they can get to #1 in the supercomputing list, although I certainly will not be pulling them away from signing that cheque. But the possibility for a very cheap, very effective cluster solution presents itself. There are lots of clusters in the world at universities and laboratories which have been built by students and scientists alike dumpster-diving for parts. An old Compaq 386 here, an RM 486 there, and the occasional but rare Pentium II perhaps at such heady clock rates as 266MHz.
Why not get out from that dumpster, put your white coats in the laundry and use EFIKA instead?
The MPC5200 is efficient; 400MHz of computing power, at around 1W. No fans. No noise. No ugly beige ATX cases and searching for ancient ZIP RAM modules to put in them. In fact the EFIKA measures about 15cm by 10cm so instead of taking up the side wall of your office building your makeshift cluster, you can simply clear a pile of papers off your desk and use that space.
posted by Matt @ Genesi USA at 12:57 AM
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