[mdlug] Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone by Adapteva — Kickstarter

[Aaron Kulkis]

Jonathan Billings wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 09:12:56AM -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
>> A supercomputer is only useful for problems that can be decomposed in
>> certain ways [or is worth figuring out how to decompose].  Otherwise an
>> old-fashioned just-faster-computer is better.
>
> Well, most people's multi-core CPUs sit idle 99% of the time, unless
> they're running an app that is specifically made to use multiple
> threads (maybe a game, or specialized software like Matlab).  I really
> doubt the average user would even know how to use a HPC system.
>
> Back before the company went under, I worked on setting up a HPC
> system in a desktop form-factor made by SiCortex.  It used a box
> filled with nodes that had a system on a chip running a 6-core
> MIPS64.  It was pretty neat, very low power and not half bad for a
> 72-core cluster.  But you couldn't just log into the system and use it
> like it was a 72-core desktop system, it was very much an HPC cluster
> with a 2GB/s interconnect.  I expect that the aformentioned RasPi
> cluster would be the same, where the interconnect is limited by the
> USB bus.  Fine for HPC jobs that don't require a fast interconnect,
> but not so useful for something that, say, relied on a distributed
> memory system.
>
> Of course, you could use this mini-HPC-cluster for nice things like
> Folding at home or less-than-nice things like generating rainbow tables.
>

You obviously have no experience systems running multiple users
simultaneously (such as during the 80's and 90's when unix machines
were typically terminal based with anywhere from a dozen to 150
users logged in, AND working, simultaneously)

Doesn't matter for Linux.  When you've got several jobs running
simultaneously... for example.... a bunch of web pages open, especially
if they have embedded flash.
I am CONSTANTLY doing a

killall gtk-gnash

to kill the damn flash ads on web pages.

The need for multi-core computing doesn't imply a
multi-process, paralleled app, all it implies is parallel processes,
regardless of whether those processes are spawned by the same
app or not.