[9fans] latest minicluster: ARM fun

[9fans] latest minicluster: ARM fun

[ron minnich]

Here is our latest minicluster design.

We used the gumstix stagecoach.

It's nice, 196 Ovaros in a box. We had a number of failed attempts on
an enclosure design:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/Strongbox?authkey=Gv1sRgCI6PwZXM57iZ8gE#

That was my first design, it was really quite compact and fun, and it
was a huge pain to assemble. It hit the basic high points however: 7
nodes per stagecoach, 7 stagecoaches per shelf, a switch per shelf
that reduced the outgoing enet cables to one. Power was a huge issue;
5V 80A per shelf, which was not fun. 10 GA wires never are.

I know at least some people on this list know Mitch Williams. He came
up with this:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/StrongboxAtSC10?authkey=Gv1sRgCJbWpcfci73HxwE#
It's quite elegant: self-contained shelves, with power supply,
Rigrunner for fuses,
continues the use of an 8-port switch per shelf, so each shelf has one
120V power cable and one enet cable coming out.

Plan 9 is in the works. This is a nice test and development platform
for software. We're going to make the design available in a way that
people can easily build their own.

ron

Re: [9fans] latest minicluster: ARM fun

[David Leimbach]

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I think Mitch visited us (MPI Softtech) in Starkville Mississippi, some
years ago, telling me about Plan 9 and FreeBSD stuff he was doing.



On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 9:56 AM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:

> Here is our latest minicluster design.
>
> We used the gumstix stagecoach.
>
> It's nice, 196 Ovaros in a box. We had a number of failed attempts on
> an enclosure design:
>
> http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/Strongbox?authkey=Gv1sRgCI6PwZXM57iZ8gE#
>
> That was my first design, it was really quite compact and fun, and it
> was a huge pain to assemble. It hit the basic high points however: 7
> nodes per stagecoach, 7 stagecoaches per shelf, a switch per shelf
> that reduced the outgoing enet cables to one. Power was a huge issue;
> 5V 80A per shelf, which was not fun. 10 GA wires never are.
>
> I know at least some people on this list know Mitch Williams. He came
> up with this:
>
> http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/StrongboxAtSC10?authkey=Gv1sRgCJbWpcfci73HxwE#
> It's quite elegant: self-contained shelves, with power supply,
> Rigrunner for fuses,
> continues the use of an 8-port switch per shelf, so each shelf has one
> 120V power cable and one enet cable coming out.
>
> Plan 9 is in the works. This is a nice test and development platform
> for software. We're going to make the design available in a way that
> people can easily build their own.
>
> ron
>
>

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Re: [9fans] latest minicluster: ARM fun

[Mathieu Lonjaret]

And it even makes a very decent christmas tree, with all the pretty lights! ;)

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 6:56 PM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here is our latest minicluster design.
>
> We used the gumstix stagecoach.
>
> It's nice, 196 Ovaros in a box. We had a number of failed attempts on
> an enclosure design:
> http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/Strongbox?authkey=Gv1sRgCI6PwZXM57iZ8gE#
>
> That was my first design, it was really quite compact and fun, and it
> was a huge pain to assemble. It hit the basic high points however: 7
> nodes per stagecoach, 7 stagecoaches per shelf, a switch per shelf
> that reduced the outgoing enet cables to one. Power was a huge issue;
> 5V 80A per shelf, which was not fun. 10 GA wires never are.
>
> I know at least some people on this list know Mitch Williams. He came
> up with this:
> http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/StrongboxAtSC10?authkey=Gv1sRgCJbWpcfci73HxwE#
> It's quite elegant: self-contained shelves, with power supply,
> Rigrunner for fuses,
> continues the use of an 8-port switch per shelf, so each shelf has one
> 120V power cable and one enet cable coming out.
>
> Plan 9 is in the works. This is a nice test and development platform
> for software. We're going to make the design available in a way that
> people can easily build their own.
>
> ron
>
>

Re: [9fans] latest minicluster: ARM fun

[Richard Miller]

Very nice, and very reminiscent of the "processor farms" we used to
build out of gumstix-sized transputer TRAM modules in the late '80s.

Of course you'd need a whole boxful of 20Mhz transputers to compete
with a single 600Mhz omap, but the transputer did make it surprisingly
easy to get linear speedups by adding more processors, thanks to the
low latency of communication on its serial links.  Because link
read/write was performed with a single instruction, with process
scheduling and interrupt handling microcoded into the cpu (no kernel
required), the overhead for a send or receive (from user code to bits
on the wire or vice versa) was about 20 cycles, or 1μs.  I would be
interested to know the equivalent figure for overo's ethernet (with
linux or plan 9 helping out).

Re: [9fans] latest minicluster: ARM fun

[Skip Tavakkolian]

Very cool!  more lights than the WOPR and slightly less than the
Connection Machine :)

The Stagecoach board seems to be available on gumstix site. Anyone order it yet?

-Skip

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 9:56 AM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here is our latest minicluster design.
>
> We used the gumstix stagecoach.
>
> It's nice, 196 Ovaros in a box. We had a number of failed attempts on
> an enclosure design:
> http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/Strongbox?authkey=Gv1sRgCI6PwZXM57iZ8gE#
>
> That was my first design, it was really quite compact and fun, and it
> was a huge pain to assemble. It hit the basic high points however: 7
> nodes per stagecoach, 7 stagecoaches per shelf, a switch per shelf
> that reduced the outgoing enet cables to one. Power was a huge issue;
> 5V 80A per shelf, which was not fun. 10 GA wires never are.
>
> I know at least some people on this list know Mitch Williams. He came
> up with this:
> http://picasaweb.google.com/rminnich/StrongboxAtSC10?authkey=Gv1sRgCJbWpcfci73HxwE#
> It's quite elegant: self-contained shelves, with power supply,
> Rigrunner for fuses,
> continues the use of an 8-port switch per shelf, so each shelf has one
> 120V power cable and one enet cable coming out.
>
> Plan 9 is in the works. This is a nice test and development platform
> for software. We're going to make the design available in a way that
> people can easily build their own.
>
> ron
>
>

Re: [9fans] latest minicluster: ARM fun

[ron minnich]

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Skip Tavakkolian
<skip.tavakkolian@gmail.com> wrote:
> Very cool!  more lights than the WOPR and slightly less than the
> Connection Machine :)
>
> The Stagecoach board seems to be available on gumstix site. Anyone order it yet?

we ordered them :-)

ron

Re: [9fans] latest minicluster: ARM fun

[Steve Simon]

> Very cool!  more lights than the WOPR and slightly less than the
> Connection Machine :)

I have never forgotten the day I asked about changing the baud rate on a serial
line on my colleges Honeywell level 66 mainframe. They took me into the machine room
and opened one of the cupboards to show me the wirewrap that would need to be changed.

I don't remember the details as I was mesmerised by the thousands of flashing LEDs,
wonderful stuff.

The good news from Ron's photos is it seems they do make 'em like they used to,
abet a little smaller.

-Steve

Re: [9fans] latest minicluster: ARM fun

[Skip Tavakkolian]

good to know; for some reason I thought you were getting early
engineering samples.

-Skip

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 11:39 AM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Skip Tavakkolian
> <skip.tavakkolian@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Very cool!  more lights than the WOPR and slightly less than the
>> Connection Machine :)
>>
>> The Stagecoach board seems to be available on gumstix site. Anyone order it yet?
>
> we ordered them :-)
>
> ron
>
>

Re: [9fans] latest minicluster: ARM fun

[Lucio De Re]

> The good news from Ron's photos is it seems they do make 'em like they used to,
> abet a little smaller.

And the biblical number seven is also back, although not in the
"seventy times seven" form yet :-)

++L