Parallella, Raspberry Pi, FPGA & All That Stuff

Keith Myers
Keith Myers
Joined: 11 Feb 11
Posts: 4699
Credit: 17542519504
RAC: 6375393

There are none.  I'm not sure

There are none.  I'm not sure why the FPGA term is even in the topic thread.

Never has been any FPGA device ever deployed on ANY BOINC project as far as I know.

Somebody can tell me different if they can cite any time.

 

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
Moderator
Joined: 1 Dec 05
Posts: 6534
Credit: 284700169
RAC: 113726

Quite some time ago ( ~ 2013

Quite some time ago ( ~ 2013 ? ) there was a discussion about implementing FFT in an FPGA. Nothing useful came of it. There wasn't any ( cheap ) hardware that could neatly accommodate the FFT size used at E@H and, IIRC there was considerable expense for the intellectual property of the source files ( VHDL ) to implement that.

Parallella ( yes, spelt with four 'l' ) was a crowd funded chip design that was actually implemented, a sort of grid of RISC processors with fast interconnects and an interesting/clever memory mapping scheme. It disappeared with the designer when he went to work for DARPA. There is still a website about it but I think the community that was active around it has dissipated. I still have a couple of versions lying around somewhere. Ah, those were the days .... I remember receiving some mild kudos for using LEGO bricks to help visualise a design I had for FFT processing on Parallella. LOL ;-)

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Keith Myers
Keith Myers
Joined: 11 Feb 11
Posts: 4699
Credit: 17542519504
RAC: 6375393

Thanks for the history story

Thanks for the history story Mike.

 

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
Moderator
Joined: 1 Dec 05
Posts: 6534
Credit: 284700169
RAC: 113726

Yeah, imagine an Application

Yeah, imagine an Application Specific Integrated Circuit for E@H ! It would be blazingly fast .... we drooled over that for a while. To be exact : one can implement an FFT in a FPGA, but it's just not practical for the operand size at E@H : 22+ bit length thus requiring ( at least ) the sine and cosine of 0 to 2*PI in increments of 2-22 to be calculable. See here ....

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Ronald McNichol
Ronald McNichol
Joined: 28 Feb 22
Posts: 27
Credit: 99853798
RAC: 0

Back on the AARCH64 Raspberry

Back on the AARCH64 Raspberry Pi. They must have figured out how to accept more results, as they are still running the 1.61 version, but the last INVALID I got was submitted on March 26! That makes me feel better.
I still get a few INCONCLUSIVES though. My results for yesterday 32 bit Pi 688 (stones? Bricks?). 64 bit Pi 813.
Reminder: Both are the same hardware, just the OS is the diff between the two.

Also of note, the total number of invalids (all 4 systems) went DOWN from a high of 83 to 67 today.

 

PorkyPies
PorkyPies
Joined: 27 Apr 16
Posts: 197
Credit: 28020629
RAC: 8947

Has anyone seen the Khadas

Has anyone seen the Khadas Vim4 SBC? It has 4x ARM Cortex A53 cores at 2Ghz and 4x ARM Cortex A73 cores at 2.2GHz with 8GB of memory and a Mali G52 GPU. It can run Ubuntu or Android. The bad news is its price. They want $199  (I assume USD) for it until the 10th of June, after which its $219.

See khadas.com/vim4 for details.

 

PorkyPies
PorkyPies
Joined: 27 Apr 16
Posts: 197
Credit: 28020629
RAC: 8947

The Turing Pi v2 is up on

The Turing Pi v2 is up on KickStarter. Link: KickStarter/TuringPi2

For those that don't know its a Mini-ITX board that holds up to 4 Raspberry Pi CM4 compute modules or their own RK1 compute module. It has dual network ports, 3 x USB, dual SATA ports, dual mini-PCIe ports, a DSI port, HDMI and a baseboard management controller.  Its powered via a standard ATX power connector. If using the CM4 compute modules you'll need to order the optional adapters.

The KickStarter special price is $219 (USD) and $10 (USD) for the CM4 adapters (each). Its says they'll ship anywhere in the world. Estimated delivery in Sep 2022. Its got 28 days to go. They've already passed their initial target as I write this.

Tom M
Tom M
Joined: 2 Feb 06
Posts: 5585
Credit: 7673012902
RAC: 1745733

You still have to buy the CPU

You still have to buy the CPU modules?

And does it boot as a single system or as up to 4 separate computers? 

A Proud member of the O.F.A.  (Old Farts Association).  Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor)

PorkyPies
PorkyPies
Joined: 27 Apr 16
Posts: 197
Credit: 28020629
RAC: 8947

Tom M wrote:You still have

Tom M wrote:

You still have to buy the CPU modules?

And does it boot as a single system or as up to 4 separate computers? 

Yes you would also have to buy 4 x CM4 modules and adapters or 4 x RK1 modules.

As far as I understand it you get 4 separate computers. I believe the baseboard management port allows you to access each one, install an OS and power them on/off individually. The two other LAN ports are used to access the CM4's if you want to login to each one separately.

As far as I know they don't all have access to all of the ports/peripherals, they are spread around between the different CM4's. That is what I gathered from Jeff Geerling's review. It may be different now. Jeff had a review of a pre-production one some months ago. See Jeff Geerling/TuringPi2

 

Ian&Steve C.
Ian&Steve C.
Joined: 19 Jan 20
Posts: 3681
Credit: 33818380927
RAC: 37816828

I think if you install a base

I think if you install a base OS that's designed for clustering, you could have access to all modules, BUT one single application will not be able to use all 4, so for the purposes of BOINC, it will always look like 4 separate devices. it would run applications on them separately. also if you look at the I/O, different things (like SATA, USB, PCIe, etc) are segregated to different modules.

 

it really just simplifies cabling and power. one power cable, one network cable, one set of peripherals.

 

 

 

_________________________________________________________________________

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.