As many of you know, in my personal life I’m historically quite fond of low power and embedded processor systems. It’s somewhat ironic then, that in my professional life I spend most of my time programming for supercomputing clusters, or for the development of programs for supercomputing clusters. As most of you probably also know, I started a somewhat successful consulting and software development company earlier this year. This gives me a terrific amount of freedom when outfitting (and hiring) our developer and IT personnel. “Why then”, postulated I, “should I not apply my beloved low power processors to the development process of extremely large and complex systems?” Sounds crazy? Maybe not so much. Maybe not at all.
Read on at our corporate blog over at Discursive Labs
Wondering what I’ve been up too? Didn’t know we had a corporate blog over at Discursive Labs? Interested in working for or with a successful start-up? Head on over to DiscursiveLabs.com and get updated. Product videos, beta tests and teasers, customer testimonials and more coming soon 
I read the blog post. very interesting. i’ve been mulling shifting from my current setup to a network of wall wart servers for a while as my electricity bill is rediculous (coned are thieves with their bills) i’d never actually priced it out though, looking at your figures even if they are off by alot it does make it a very attrictive proposition as i’d recover the initial costs pretty quickly.
Hey RK,
I completely understand about the electric bill. We’re paying spike rates here in LA right now and it’s pretty intense. A network of wal wart servers sounds like a really fun and versatile setup. Just remember where they all are when it’s time to move out. I can imagine the next person in your house wondering why all the wall outlets have blinking green lights on them
If you’re looking to do it on the cheap, I’d reccomend picking up some of the seagate dockstar agents when they go on sale for 22$ shipped sometimes at woot or 1saleaday. They’ve got 1gige, 1.2ghz, 256/256 and are small enough to fit about 30 in a briefcase. Throw in a mighty big gig-e switch and a UPS and you’ve got the world’s first laptop cluster heh.
I’m hoping to post up an article about our experiences using a many many (30+) arm core cluster as our main computing cluser (production apps rather than compiling) once we figure out some of the kinks or port more of openMPI to arm. Hope all is well, and thanks
/H
would you be willing to help find a functional linux that can play Unreal Tournament 99, and maybe Wolfenstein:ET, in exchange for a hp t5520 terminal?
most of the ones i have tried have kernel panics or have a problem with the video. the flash based linuxes dont seem to wright logs. i’m still trying to change the bios to make it hard drive compatable.
Hey Nonya,
So you’re looking to run UT99 and Wolfensten:ET servers on the arm processors, or clients? I believe server should be doable, not sure about the clients though.. If you’re running on the t5520, it’s got a VIA x86 compatible processors, so you should probably be able to get them working natively with an older version of ubuntu (maybe 9.04?) Haven’t looked into that model specifically though.
good luck!
nope it crashed, couldn’t even keep the console working. im thinking it has something to do with the buchered bios. i have tried lots of variations.
i’m wanting to run clients. not sure about the video processor, but they meet all the other requirements.
Hey Nonya,
That’s too bad. Could be the video drivers or driver settings. Have you tried installing Quake 3? It’s got an smattering of ports as the source is free, and I recall you can get it running from almost nothing. I had a version for years I would run straight off a CD and if you can get it running Wolf:ET would run too. Good luck!
i’ll have to try that. i have 18 of them, and if i cant get them working i’m probly going to sell them idividualy on ebay, or something. they still have windows ce on them, but it has no usb storage support.
starting to think HP did something to make it so only their linux will work with it. had it crash at the boot prompt with puppy linux. even a bare kernel seems to crash after every other command.
Interesting. Are there any devices that don’t get drivers loaded, maybe some errors in the dmesg log? I wouldn’t put it past HP (check out hplies.com for tons of horror stories) to intentionally gimp their hardware in some fashion. Good luck!
so thats why my nephiews computer has bricked out it’s video so manny times. i thought it was just nvidea making exploding chips again. that heat gun is eventualy going to stop fixing it.
i’ll have to check if i can, thanks! the bios already dosen’t support regular harddisks. i suspect it’s been altered in other ways. i’ll still give you one if your interested, think i still have your address somewhere.
Hey Nonya,
Appreciate it, but already have a stack of thin clients around here and can’t really use another. Appreciate it though! Working on a fun diy handheld type hack while I’ve got some free time this thanksgiving, hoping to post soon. Good luck on Q3, and yeah, I had a couple of HP tops go bad a couple years ago and they fought me tooth and nail on the warranty. Been buying mostly dells since.
i’ll have to try that. i have 18 of them, and if i cant get them working i’m probly going to sell them idividualy on ebay, or something. they still have windows ce on them, but it has no usb storage support. starting to think HP did something to make it so only their linux will work with it. had it crash at the boot prompt with puppy linux. even a bare kernel seems to crash after every other command.
that is totaly not cool. your page is messed up, sure hope its not a hack.
Hey Florence,
Sorry to hear that. Sounds like there may be a bit of unsupported hardware. Does the dmesg log show anything weird after crashing? (you can mount the hard drive in another computer to read the dmesg log after a crash, should be /var/log/messages). I’ve not heard of this particular issue, hope it’s resolvable with some sleuthing.
Hey Nonja,
Do you mean my page? It is displaying correctly for me. Hopefully it is not your machine with issues?
i have no idea who florence is, but no there are no logs that i can find the flash based linuxes don’t seem to wright error logs and the kernel panic makes all ram-drive based logs inaccessible.
Hey Nonya,
Was that you? I have no idea who Florence is either. Shame about the error logs not writing. Are there serial ports available? You could try running a mingetty console over serial and pipe the dmesg log to that. It’s a tricky situation, no doubt. Good luck!