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

[Aaron Kulkis]

Jonathan Billings wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 12:34:16PM -0700, Art Dries wrote:
>>
>> I had a bioinformatics project a year ago that could have used this.
>> (genetic analysis scales very well)
>>
>> Anyone into high-end crypto could use a pair for an end-to-end VPN.
>> (isn't math fun?)
>>
>> The specs, API, and code will all be OPEN, so the possibities are endless.
>>
>> For $100, this would make an excellent (insert idea here)
>
> True, but I am trying to dispell any notion that this thing will
> instantly turn your laptop into a 45GHz system.  The extra cores on
> the system are specialized, and you need to write code specifically to
> use it.
>

One simple solution:
Guest OS running in the ARM-space, running its own set of processes
compiled (or cross-compiled) to ARM

Or even simpler... do the whole distro compiled for ARM, and then
you get rid of the non-uniform hardware problem.

If you gave me a 3 GHz quadcore, and gave me the option of trading
that for a 48-core multi-CPU ARM machine running at only 1 GHz,
yes, sure, single-threaded apps will take longer to complete---MAYBE...

Depending on machine load, that single-threaded app might STILL
get more clock-cycles (since CPU contention goes way down due to
the plethora of CPUs available), and therefore complete faster
than on a low-core, high clock-rate CPU.

I have a 2006-era dual core... it's constantly getting bogged down
whenever I want to do a couple CPU intensive things simultaneously.

I don't need parallelized software...what I need are parallel cores.


> This is why I brought up the GPGPU use of video cards -- pretty much
> the same thing as this, although it's being used already.  Yes, it is
> cool that it's all open, but it'll be tough to beat the economics of
> using cheap gaming cards on regular PCs.
>