We’ve already covered several cluster solutions based on Raspberry Pi boards such as Bitscope Blade with up to 40 Raspberry Pi boards, a 16 Raspberry Pi Zero cluster board prototype, Circumference “datacenter-in-a-box” with up to 32 Raspberry Pi 3 B+ boards.
If you want something more compact, it makes sense to develop a platform with Raspberry Pi Compute Modules instead, and we’ve already published news about MiniNodes Raspberry Pi 3 CoM Carrier Board that supports up to to 5 Compute Modules 3/3+ last year. There’s now another option with Turing Pi Clusterboard support up to 7 Compute Modules for applications leveraging Kubernetes, Docker, Jupyter Notebook, machine learning (TensorFlow/Caffe), and serverless stack.
Turing Pi specifications:
- 7x Sockets for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3/3+
- Storage – 7x microSD card slots
- Video Output – 1x HDMI port, MIPI DSI connector
- Audio – 1x 3.5mm audio jack
- Camera I/F – 2x MIPI CSI connectors
- Networking – Gigabit Ethernet port and on-board switch
- USB – 8x USB ports
- Power Supply – 12-20V DC jack or ATX power supply
- Dimensions – 170 x 170mm (mini-ITX form factor)
The product page does not contain much information at this stage, and specifically no details about software installation or tutorials, but the board is available for pre-order for $128 with shipping planned for this autumn. You’ll also need to add our own Raspberry Pi Compute modules, and with pricing starting at $25 for the RPi CM3 Lite module, and a 7-module system would go for a little over $300, not including microSD cards nor a power supply.
Via LinuxGizmos and Technabob
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Curious whether they chose USB Ethernet modules that allow to netboot. Unfortunately MiniNodes never answered whether their ‘Raspberry Pi 3 CoM Carrier Board’ allows for PXE/netbooting (but with the TuringPi thing announcement I doubt there is a market for the MiniNodes variant any more)
Even RPi4 does not support netboot, because its GPU ROM code capabilities. So building a cluster using RPis is crazily inefficient.
Yes, RPi 4 does not (yet) support netbooting since the hardware is different, the product has been rushed out and RPi Trading guys will deliver this functionality later as some sort of ThreadX update. Most probably it’s ready once an Compute Module 4 will be ready.
But with RPi 3B/3B+ netbooting was possible and most probably all that’s needed is seven times a Microchip LAN7515 (USB2 hub and crippled USB2 attached Gigabit Ethernet) on the above Clusterboard to get this working out of the box (at least with BCM2837B0 based CMs).
7 is the right size for low-cost clusters. It usually allows to use all ports of very inexpensive switch chips, allowing to keep simplicity at its maximum for a reasonable price. I’d love to see this using NanoPi-Fire3, this would provide 56 cores on a small low-power board 🙂
Nothing beats a cluster of cheap Oranges 🙂
Back on sale again
http://linuxgizmos.com/7-slot-raspberry-pi-cm3-cluster-board-returns-in-limited-run/