A RISC-V Supercluster For Very Low Cost

April 19, 2023 by 22 Comments

As ARM continues to make inroads in the personal computing space thanks to its more modern and streamlined instruction set architecture (ISA) and its reduced power demands especially compared to x86 machines, the main reason it continues to become more widespread is how easy it is to get a license to make chips using this ISA. It’s still not a fully open source instruction set, though, so if you want something even more easily accessible than ARM you’ll need to find something like these chips running the fully open-source RISC-V ISA and possibly put them to work in a custom supercluster.

[bitluni] recently acquired a large number of CH32V003 microcontrollers and managed to configure them all to work together in a cluster. The entire array is only $2 (not including all of the other components attached to the board) so a cluster of arbitrary size is potentially possible. [bitluni] built a four-layer PCB for this project with an 8-bit bus so the microcontrollers can communicate with each other. Each chip has its own ADC and I/O that are wired to a set of GPIO pins on the sides of the board. The build is rounded out with a USB interface for programming and power.

There were a few quirks to get this supercluster up and running, including some issues with the way the reset and debug pins work on these specific microcontrollers. With some bugs like this out of the way, the entire cluster is up and running, and [bitluni] hints that his design could be easily interfaced with even larger RISC-V superclusters. As for a use for this build, sometimes clusters like these are built just to build them, but since the I/O and ADCs are accessible in theory this cluster could do anything a larger microcontroller might be able to do, only at a much lower price.

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PicoCray - Raspberry Pi Pico Cluster

Parallel Computing On The PicoCray RP2040 Cluster

April 9, 2023 by 28 Comments

[ExtremeElectronics] cleverly demonstrates that if one Raspberry Pi Pico is good, then nine must be awesome.  The PicoCray project connects multiple Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller modules into a parallel architecture leveraging an I2C bus to communicate between nodes.

The same PicoCray code runs on all nodes, but a grounded pin on one of the Pico modules indicates that it is to operate as the controller node.  All of the remaining nodes operate as processor nodes.  Each processor node implements a random back-off technique to request an address from the controller on the shared bus. After waiting a random amount of time, a processor will check if the bus is being used.  If the bus is in use, the processor will go back to waiting.  If the bus is not in use, the processor can request an address from the controller.

Once a processor node has an address, it can be sent tasks from the controller node.  In the example application, these tasks involve computing elements of the Mandelbrot Set. The particular elements to be computed in a given task are allocated by the controller node which then later collects the results from each processor node and aggregates the results for display.

The name for this project is inspired by Seymore Cray. Our Father of the Supercomputer biography tells his story including why the Cray-1 Supercomputer was referred to as “the world’s most expensive loveseat.” For even more Cray-1 inspiration, check out this Raspberry Pi Zero Cluster.

Turing Pi 2: The Low Power Cluster

June 16, 2022 by 39 Comments

We’re not in the habit of recommending Kickstarter projects here at Hackaday, but when prototype hardware shows up on our desk, we just can’t help but play with it and write it up for the readers. And that is exactly where we find ourselves with the Turing Pi 2. You may be familiar with the original Turing Pi, the carrier board that runs seven Raspberry Pi Compute boards at once. That one supports the Compute versions 1 and 3, but a new design was clearly needed for the Compute Module 4. Not content with just supporting the CM4, the developers at Turing Machines have designed a 4-slot carrier board based on the NVIDIA Jetson pinout. The entire line of Jetson devices are supported, and a simple adapter makes the CM4 work. There’s even a brand new module planned around the RK3588, which should be quite impressive.

One of the design decisions of the TP2 is to use the mini-ITX form-factor and 24-pin ATX power connection, giving us the option to install the TP2 in a small computer case. There’s even a custom rack-mountable case being planned by the folks over at My Electronics. So if you want 4 or 8 Raspberry Pis in a rack mount, this one’s for you.
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Round LCDs Put To Work In Rack Mount Gauge Cluster

May 13, 2022 by 25 Comments

Like many of you, we’re intrigued by the possibilities offered by the availability of affordable round LCD panels. But beyond the smartwatches they were designed for, it’s not always easy to come up with an appropriate application for such non-traditional displays. Digital “steam gauges” are one of the first ideas that come to mind, so it’s perhaps no surprise that’s the direction [Tom Dowad] took his project. But rather than just one or two gauges, he decided to go all out and put eight of them in a 1U rack mountable unit.

What do you need eight faux-analog gauges for? Beats us, but that’s not our department. Now [Tom] has a whole row of indicators that can be used to show whatever it is he likes to keep an eye on. The fact that the device is actually controlled via MIDI may provide us a clue that there’s a musical component at play (no pun intended), but then, it wouldn’t be the first time we’d seen MIDI used simply as a convenient and well supported way of synchronizing gadgets. Continue reading “Round LCDs Put To Work In Rack Mount Gauge Cluster” →

Cluster Your Pi Zeros In Style With 3D Printed Cray-1

March 21, 2022 by 36 Comments

From a performance standpoint we know building a homebrew Raspberry Pi cluster doesn’t make a lot of sense, as even a fairly run of the mill desktop x86 machine is sure to run circles around it. That said, there’s an argument to be made that rigging up a dozen little Linux boards gives you a compact and affordable playground to experiment with things like parallel computing and load balancing. Is it a perfect argument? Not really. But if you’re anything like us, the whole thing starts making a lot more sense when you realize your cluster of Pi Zeros can be built to look like the iconic Cray-1 supercomputer.

This clever 3D printed enclosure comes from [Kevin McAleer], who says he was looking to learn more about deploying software using Ansible, Docker, Flask, and other modern frameworks with fancy sounding names. After somehow managing to purchase a dozen Raspberry Pi Zero 2s, he needed a way to keep them all in a tidy package. Beyond looking fantastically cool, the symmetrical design of the Cray-1 allowed him to design his miniature version in such a way that each individual wedge is made up of the same identical  set of 3D printed parts.

In the video after the break, [Kevin] explains some of the variations the design went through. We appreciate his initial goal of making it so you didn’t need any additional hardware to assemble the thing, but in the end you’ll need to pick up some M2.5 standoffs and matching screws if you want to build one yourself. We particularly like how you can hide all the USB power cables inside the lower “cushion” area with the help of some 90-degree cables, leaving the center core open.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen somebody build their own tiny Cray-1. A particularly dedicated hacker built his own 1/10th scale replica of the 1970s supercomputer powered by an FPGA back in 2010, and eventually got to the point of trying to boot original software on it.

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Learning The Ropes With A Raspberry Pi Mandelbrot Cluster

January 18, 2022 by 10 Comments

You’ve probably heard it said that clustering a bunch of Raspberry Pis up to make a “supercomputer” doesn’t make much sense, as even a middle-of-the-road desktop could blow it away in terms of performance. While that may be true, the reason most people make Pi clusters isn’t for raw power, it’s so they can build experience with parallel computing without breaking the bank.

So while there was probably a “better” way to produce the Mandelbrot video seen below, creator [Michael Kohn] still learned a lot about putting together a robust parallel processing environment using industry standard tools like Kubernetes and Docker. Luckily for us, he was kind enough to document the whole process for anyone else who might be interested in following in his footsteps. Whatever your parallel task is, and whatever platform it happens to be running on, some of the notes here are likely to help you get it going.

It’s not the biggest Raspberry Pi cluster we’ve ever seen, but the four Pi 4s and the RGB LED festooned enclosure they live in make for an affordable and space-saving cluster to hone your skills on. Whether you’re practicing for the future of software development and deployment, or just looking for something new to play around with, building one of these small-scale clusters is a great way to get in on the action.

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Custom Instrument Cluster For Aging Car

August 1, 2021 by 32 Comments

All of the technological improvements to vehicles over the past few decades have led to cars and trucks that would seem borderline magical to anyone driving something like a Ford Pinto in the 1970s. Not only are cars much safer due to things like crumple zones, anti-lock brakes, air bags, and compulsory seat belt use, but there’s a wide array of sensors, user interfaces, and computers that also improve the driving experience. At least, until it starts wearing out. The electronic technology in our modern cars can be tricky to replace, but [Aravind] at least was able to replace part of the instrument cluster on his aging (yet still modern) Skoda and improve upon it in the process.

These cars have a recurring problem with the central part of the cluster that includes an LCD display. If replacement parts can even be found, they tend to cost a significant fraction of the value of the car, making them uneconomical for most. [Aravind] found that a 3.5″ color LCD that was already available fit perfectly in the space once the old screen was removed, so from there the next steps were to interface it to the car. These have a CAN bus separated from the main control CAN bus, and the port was easily accessible, so an Arduino with a RTC was obtained to handle the heavy lifting of interfacing with it.

Now, [Aravind] has a new LCD screen in the console that’s fully programmable and potentially longer-lasting than the factory LCD was. There’s also full documentation of the process on the project page as well, for anyone else with a Volkswagen-adjacent car from this era. Either way, it’s a much more economical approach to replacing the module than shelling out the enormous cost of OEM replacement parts. Of course, CAN bus hacks like these are often gateway projects to doing more involved CAN bus projects like turning an entire vehicle into a video game controller.

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