[HH] solar powered supercomputer

[Tom Metro]

Kurt Keville wrote:
>> What was the name of the trash can you used?
> 
> We originally tried to acquire a BigBelly
> (http://bigbellysolar.com/) but could not afford it...

Sure, I've seen those around, but why? Just because you liked the look
of it? You would have ended up throwing away all the guts, and even the
solar panel would have been undersized, though I suppose you could have
ganged it with another mounted on the side.


> ...the RubberMaid 9P90 looked the most like a BigBelly so we went
> with that...

Still almost a $300 trash can. I suppose a minor cost for a $5K computer.


>> Did you build custom bracketing for the switches, USB hubs, and
>> Pandaboards?
> 
> Yes, modeled on a 15 node design by a Raspberry Pi developer we met...
> http://blog.chris.tylers.info/index.php?/categories/23-PandaBoard-Planet

So you used stacked boards joined by threaded rods in the same fashion,
rather than slide-in card rails? Isn't that a major pain when a board in
the middle of the stack fails?


>> Any comment on the many-core ARM parts that have been mentioned on this
>> list previously? Do they lack the floating point hardware necessary to
>> be interesting for this use?
> 
> We are waiting with anticipation on the availability of the ARMv8
> architecture (64 bit) and ARM Cortex-A15, which may be out in
> Qualcomm-based cell phones already.

But these will be what, likely quad core, or 8-cores at best?

The Adapteva's Epiphany has 16 cores:
http://www.mail-archive.com/hardwarehacking@blu.org/msg00163.html

(I was also thinking of the 8-core Propeller:
http://www.mail-archive.com/hardwarehacking@blu.org/msg00275.html

but it isn't really powerful enough to run Linux.)


>> Aside from the Pandaboard and Beagle board, are any of these things
>> real? If so, they weren't mentioned.
> 
> We strayed from the agenda a bit for sure... appropriate links are...
> http://designsomething.org/

Ah...they're all boards with TI CPUs.

I didn't know Neuros, who used to (still does?) make an x86-based
set-top-box running XBMC. Their site looks pretty stale and doesn't
mentioned the OSD3 product referenced on the designsomething.org site,
which I assume contains a TI CPU.


> and
> http://raymii.org/cms/p_Small_Linux_PCs_overview

Nice aggregation of products.


> There was to be more... I forgot the Trimslice at home, the Cotton Candy
> didn't come in and we decided not to show the Makey Makey...
> http://www.makeymakey.com/

I knew the Cotton Candy wouldn't make it. I hadn't heard of the other two.

http://raymii.org/cms/p_Small_Linux_PCs_overview#trimslice

  Trim-Slice is the first desktop computer powered by NVIDIA Tegra 2. It
  is a miniature fanless dual-core ARM Cortex A9 computer that provides
  outstanding multimedia experience.


 -Tom