Cheap BOINC cruncher ??

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi all,

Anyone seen this story about the RaspberryPI:

The Pi is powered by a 700MHz ARM-compatible processor with hardware support for OpenGL ES 2.0 and Blu-ray-grade playback (1080p30 H.264), and features 256MB of RAM, TV, HDMI and audio outputs, a USB port, a Flash memory card slot, 100MBit Ethernet and a number of I/O pins for a serial port and general purpose hacking. This is all fitted on a low-cost 85.60mm x 53.98mm board that's about 20mm high, weighs 40g and is powered from a 5V supply.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/28/raspberry_pi/

It can apparently run Linux and if booting from a USB boot stick, it *might* be suitable to become a mini-cruncher, esp as it doesn't need any fans or extra's cooling....

These things are gonna sell for about $35 (about £22) and accordingly "the foundation hopes to first bag a following of hobbyists, casual developers and home users, who will help fortify the platform's software base, documentation and support channels...."

Sounds like it might be a good basis for a low cost crunching farm...?

regards
Tim

[galacticminor]

Hi,
  Yes there is an article somewhere (I'll try and dig out the url for you) about someone doing this. It's a good idea in principle, but the main problem seems to be the instruction set the CPU uses at the moment (Being ARM based and not x86/x86-64).

The article aimed to see if it was possible to run a farm of these whilst powering the entire system from solar/wind power (making them completely free of electricity bills). The general conclusion was that yes it is feasible and possible but it will take up to a week to crunch a single work unit. The Seti@Home code simply hasn't been built to take full advantage of this architecture yet.

However this may change soon, and I don't know what developments have come about since then.

-Andrew

[UBT - Timbo]

Hi,
  Yes there is an article somewhere (I'll try and dig out the url for you) about someone doing this. It's a good idea in principle, but the main problem seems to be the instruction set the CPU uses at the moment (Being ARM based and not x86/x86-64)......

Hi Andrew,

My hunch is that with so many new devices (smartphones, tablets, netbooks, etc) using the ARM CPU, that there is a simple need for a stripped down BOINC client that can run on this platform and hence generate some useful credits as long as the CPU doesn't have to use ALL of it's resources just to run BOINC....

After all, a phone should still be useable.....even if it's crunching a work unit.

All it needs is a project that has a low resource requirement and which can get by with small WU sizes.....which would minimise any data bandwidth requirements too....

Hopefully something will turn up.

regards
Tim