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

[Jonathan Billings]

On Oct 10, 2012, at 5:41 PM, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
> 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)

Actually, I'm rather familiar with it.  People are still using UNIX and Linux in such a manner, although with SSH instead of dumb terminals.

> 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.

I'd agree with you if we were discussing a system that added more cores at the expense of core speed.  But that's not the Parallella hardware.  The daughterboard isn't even the same architecture as the controller system.

It'd be cool if they hacked the linux kernel so it could act like a single system image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_system_image), which I've worked with before with an SGI Altix cluster.  It doesn't appear to be the case from the kickstarter web page, it more closely resembles a GPGPU system, which is cool, I'll admit, particularly if it's all open.  

--
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>