Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone - Kickstarter Project

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vv111y

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I'd like to promote this kickstarter project in the hopes it can actually reach its goals(s).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone

I won't regurgitate all the info on the project page - I think they cover everything well enough. Where this really shines is in power consumption, and to me, in the promotion of an open-source, grass roots based community around the chip/platform.

Price/GFLOP is worse than if you got a current GPGPU setup, but if you ran Your system 24/7 my guess is you would get your money back in a year. Also, the value is in promoting a community based platform which is an investment that will keep on giving returns long into the future.

This comment says it best I think:

Kai Staats 2 days ago

I spent ten years in supercomputing, building large scale systems built upon the POWER architecture. I was engaged in dozens of discussions with leading scientists at NASA, the DoE and DoD, at Universities and in the meetings with Freescale, IBM, and Sony -- and this is what everyone wanted to do, but no one could make it happen for the burden of the corporate structure.

The big guys are too blinded by short-term profit, answering to their shareholders in a roller coaster market to be able to take a step back and consider the long-term, the value in establishing a new paradigm for open source supercomputing.

Yes. You are doing this right. This is exactly how supercomputing should be developed. It is the only way for advanced parallel systems to take the next, big leap forward. No one company has the resources to make the philosophical and realworld breakthroughs in-house. Only through engaging the bigger landscape of closet genius, hacker kids, retired software engineers, and everyone in between can the true potential of an architecture be fully explored.

This is Arduino on steroids. Make if happen!
Click to expand...

I've pledged $199 for the 64-core option. Please spread the word, thanks!
 
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Could be just me but the link doesn't work. I got a 404 page "We apologize but something's gone wrong — an old link, a bad link, or some little glitch."
 
fixed.

I'll note up front that over at Ars they complained about:

1) summing hz to 45 Ghz for their marketing - yeah it's dumb but I just ignored it

2) cost/GFLOP. but as I mentioned, eventually the electrical (operating) cost will surpass that. Also, I consider this a form of investment for the future.

3) single precision floating point, no double precision. Fair point, but again I'll argue it's an investment for the future (they are planning 64-bit FP) and also not everyone needs double FP.
 
vv111y said:
I'd like to promote this kickstarter project in the hopes it can actually reach its goals(s). Please spread the word, thanks!
Click to expand...

My suggestion would be to also get the Reddit community involved if that hasn't already been tried.
 
vv111y said:
This is hurting. I figured that here on a hardware site there would be lots of interest. I wonder what's going on?
Click to expand...

Well, it has been my experience that the "General Hardware" subforum is mostly used by people to get suggestions for computer builds and/or help solving problems. That being the case, you have people focused on their own particular issue and not that many of them to begin with.

You might want to try contacting the guys who post things to "[H]ard|OCP Front Page News" which is the very top forum on the front page. MajorDomo or Steve are the two who are the tread starters in that forum I think. If they post something about it, it may be seen by quite a few more people.

Edit to add: And as far as Reddit goes, I didn't realize they moved the kickstarter projects from r/technology to its own subreddit. That kickstarter subreddit is dead. That's too bad.

I assume you are promoting this project simply as a fan but you or the guys from Adapteva might want to also try alerting sites like Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, Bit-Tech.net, etc. directly (not via their forums) to see if you can get anyone at those sites to write about the project. Might get more exposure that way. Just a thought.
 
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Thanks beto, I'm late to this but I need to give it another go...(yep I'm a backer and they/we are hitting the other sites)

The guys have done a 'pivot' as they weren't getting the traction, so please everyone check out both the new video and the updates with lots of tech goodies

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone


updates: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone/posts

ie.
- ARM is a ZYNQ7010 with a FPGA sub-unit for all kinds of modding goodness. other backers that know more than me see this is a good deal for the ZYNQ alone (update#14)
- 2d grid between the cores, better then xeon phi ring topology
- testemonials
- SDR & cognitive radio
- true multi-core, not gpu simd
- 50GFLOP/watt, better than any other option out there

here's their tweet suggestions to give an idea what they want to deliver:
A $100 Zynq based computer, are you kidding me? http://kck.st/UGQjG3

An ARM based 5 Watt computer that runs Ubuntu Desktop for under $100. http://kck.st/UGQjG3

Parallella a smart(er)TV for $100? http://kck.st/UGQjG3

Parallella: The first truly open OpenCL hardware platform. http://kck.st/UGQjG3

Parallella: 18 CPUs at 800MHz, 25 GFLOPS, 1GB DRAM, $100. Sweet! http://kck.st/UGQjG3

Parallella a hackable platform. http://kck.st/UGQjG3

The $100 credit card sized Parallella combines FPGA, ARM, and DSPs. http://kck.st/UGQjG3

Parallella runs OpenCV: http://kck.st/UGQjG3

Parallella will be great for SDR: http://kck.st/UGQjG3

At $100 wouldn’t the open Parallella be a great education platform? http://kck.st/UGQjG3

What could Parallella do for DIY drones? http://kck.st/UGQjG3

What could Parallella do for robotics? http://kck.st/UGQjG3

Parallella, the ultimate “thin client”. http://kck.st/UGQjG3

Parallella, a computer your kids can carry around in an Altoid tin can. http://kck.st/UGQjG3
Click to expand...
 
I'd love to see alternatives like this, especially a project that promises open hardware and software. An issue that's creeping up lately. If they can deliver anywhere near the performance of an Intel i7, let alone being many times faster, I can see this being very popular with the community. Get Ubuntu running on that asap and maybe Valve will get Steam working with it too.
 
I'm not an electrical engineer so hopefully someone can explain how they can make a cpu that's competitive with Intel given how far ahead Intel is vs even AMD who is a billion dollar company. Intel is on 22nm cpu's, quad core, hyperthreading, etc... They spent over $8 Billion in R&D in 2011. If what this company is doing was worthwhile, why isn't Intel already doing it?

Is this project more like how the PS3 has a proprietary system and people program specifically for that architecture?
 
Seventyfive said:
I'm not an electrical engineer so hopefully someone can explain how they can make a cpu that's competitive with Intel given how far ahead Intel is vs even AMD who is a billion dollar company. Intel is on 22nm cpu's, quad core, hyperthreading, etc... They spent over $8 Billion in R&D in 2011. If what this company is doing was worthwhile, why isn't Intel already doing it?

Is this project more like how the PS3 has a proprietary system and people program specifically for that architecture?
Click to expand...

That was the whole point of the Larrabee. It was like 32 Pentium processors, and like old school Pentiums. The problem was developers who could use it. The Sega Saturn had parallel processors, but developers said fuck that.

There's a reason why he says that he's hoping that people will find a solution to this "unique problem". How to make parallel processors as easy to code for as single core processors?
 
Ashbringer said:
That was the whole point of the Larrabee. It was like 32 Pentium processors, and like old school Pentiums. The problem was developers who could use it. The Sega Saturn had parallel processors, but developers said fuck that.

There's a reason why he says that he's hoping that people will find a solution to this "unique problem". How to make parallel processors as easy to code for as single core processors?
Click to expand...

So basically people will have to program for this CPU in a different way than what they are used to in order to take full advantage of the CPU's potential power. If that hurdle for programming is too great, the CPU may be "powerful" but since there is no software nobody will want the hardware. Is that about right?
 
Wow! this thing is sick. This project is going to be one that I could only hope that follows through and becomes viral. A lot of people could really benefit from it from hardware developers to software nuts who could really make this amazing. I am sure the problem will be fixed with the help of all of the linux nuts around. It is too big a success to fall apart and that would honestly really be a shame. I wish the best of luck to him and hope I see these on the market soon!
 
Ashbringer said:
That was the whole point of the Larrabee. It was like 32 Pentium processors, and like old school Pentiums. The problem was developers who could use it. The Sega Saturn had parallel processors, but developers said fuck that.

There's a reason why he says that he's hoping that people will find a solution to this "unique problem". How to make parallel processors as easy to code for as single core processors?
Click to expand...

Just like video cards. Almost all videocards are massively parallel. Shaders, stream processors same things. Think of each as a tiny cpu.

What you really need isn't the hardware, it is the easy to use language and a SDK that an average programmer can use.

AMD's hardware is lightyears beyond nvidia or intel, but they cant make a decent driver or sdk. their development team SUCKS. that's the make or break.

Intel has floated by on vastly inferior hardware with excellent software optimization and development to fill in the gaps until it can catch up.
 
I don't really understand the project. I don't understand how throwing down more hardware will solve the problem that coding for 1 CPU is hard enough that coding for a quad core raises the level of complexity to the point that games programmers are having a hard time with it?

We could connect all the computers from the users on HardOCP but if you don't have a programmer with a 5 million IQ, who can utilize the processing power, what's the point?

What's the difference between distributed computing and Parallella?

We have more pressing problems such as the fact that humans are so short-sighted that they would pour petroleum byproducts into the water table:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8

Since fracking has spread from the USA to Canada to the UK to Africa we've most likely hit peak oil. We will need parallel computing to unfuck ourselves from genius concepts like transgenic pollution ( thanks Monsanto ). Or maybe DARPA will use the technology to build killer robots.
 
MrAgmoore said:
I don't really understand the project. I don't understand how throwing down more hardware will solve the problem that coding for 1 CPU is hard enough that coding for a quad core raises the level of complexity to the point that games programmers are having a hard time with it?

We could connect all the computers from the users on HardOCP but if you don't have a programmer with a 5 million IQ, who can utilize the processing power, what's the point?

What's the difference between distributed computing and Parallella?

We have more pressing problems such as the fact that humans are so short-sighted that they would pour petroleum byproducts into the water table:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8

Since fracking has spread from the USA to Canada to the UK to Africa we've most likely hit peak oil. We will need parallel computing to unfuck ourselves from genius concepts like transgenic pollution ( thanks Monsanto ). Or maybe DARPA will use the technology to build killer robots.
Click to expand...
The projects purpose is to try and solve that problem. To make the tools needed to make parallel processing as easy as a single core CPU. Basically make better tools to code for the hardware.
 
Ashbringer said:
I'd love to see alternatives like this, especially a project that promises open hardware and software. An issue that's creeping up lately. If they can deliver anywhere near the performance of an Intel i7, let alone being many times faster, I can see this being very popular with the community. Get Ubuntu running on that asap and maybe Valve will get Steam working with it too.
Click to expand...

That's a *big* reason I love it, getting an open community for this arena.
Yep it comes with Ubuntu installed, check out the newer video and the updates.

Ashbringer said:
That was the whole point of the Larrabee. It was like 32 Pentium processors, and like old school Pentiums. The problem was developers who could use it. The Sega Saturn had parallel processors, but developers said fuck that.

There's a reason why he says that he's hoping that people will find a solution to this "unique problem". How to make parallel processors as easy to code for as single core processors?
Click to expand...

Seventyfive said:
So basically people will have to program for this CPU in a different way than what they are used to in order to take full advantage of the CPU's potential power. If that hurdle for programming is too great, the CPU may be "powerful" but since there is no software nobody will want the hardware. Is that about right?
Click to expand...

Aseras said:
Just like video cards. Almost all videocards are massively parallel. Shaders, stream processors same things. Think of each as a tiny cpu.

What you really need isn't the hardware, it is the easy to use language and a SDK that an average programmer can use.

AMD's hardware is lightyears beyond nvidia or intel, but they cant make a decent driver or sdk. their development team SUCKS. that's the make or break.

Intel has floated by on vastly inferior hardware with excellent software optimization and development to fill in the gaps until it can catch up.
Click to expand...

afaik the GPUs are SIMD primarily whereas the Epiphany (Parallela's co-processor) are true (but simple) cores, so it is more comparable to the xeon phi.

MrAgmoore said:
I don't really understand the project. I don't understand how throwing down more hardware will solve the problem that coding for 1 CPU is hard enough that coding for a quad core raises the level of complexity to the point that games programmers are having a hard time with it?

We could connect all the computers from the users on HardOCP but if you don't have a programmer with a 5 million IQ, who can utilize the processing power, what's the point?

What's the difference between distributed computing and Parallella?

We have more pressing problems such as the fact that humans are so short-sighted that they would pour petroleum byproducts into the water table:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8

Since fracking has spread from the USA to Canada to the UK to Africa we've most likely hit peak oil. We will need parallel computing to unfuck ourselves from genius concepts like transgenic pollution ( thanks Monsanto ). Or maybe DARPA will use the technology to build killer robots.
Click to expand...

For everyone - 80+% of the backers are developers and they are just gunning to get their hands on this. There are lots of planned projects, if you go to the comments section you'll find some of the discussion. Also, they want to push this into the classroom so that future developers can get their feet wet with thinking parallel.
Ultimately there is no choice - all the solutions coming out are parallel. I can't think of a better solution than getting a FOSS community around an open hardware platform.

MrAgmoore, even though that's OT I can really appreciate what You're saying. I encourage you to fight against the evils of the world. I'll discourage you from becoming cynical and passive.

4fingerninja said:
Wow! this thing is sick. This project is going to be one that I could only hope that follows through and becomes viral. A lot of people could really benefit from it from hardware developers to software nuts who could really make this amazing. I am sure the problem will be fixed with the help of all of the linux nuts around. It is too big a success to fall apart and that would honestly really be a shame. I wish the best of luck to him and hope I see these on the market soon!
Click to expand...

Thanks ninja! Great to hear!
 
Aseras said:
Just like video cards. Almost all videocards are massively parallel. Shaders, stream processors same things. Think of each as a tiny cpu.

What you really need isn't the hardware, it is the easy to use language and a SDK that an average programmer can use.

AMD's hardware is lightyears beyond nvidia or intel, but they cant make a decent driver or sdk. their development team SUCKS. that's the make or break.

Intel has floated by on vastly inferior hardware with excellent software optimization and development to fill in the gaps until it can catch up.
Click to expand...

http://www.adapteva.com/white-papers/scalable-parallel-multiplication-of-big-matrices/

"we demonstrated how the Epiphany multicore processor can perform the NxN multiplication when written as a single-thread, pure standard C program. The compiled C program achieved about 70% of the peak theoretical performance. Another implementation, written in native ASM, achieved a ratio of about 90% of the peak theoretical performance."

Draw your own conclusions.
 
UPDATES

Progress - Over the morning it looks like they're getting above the $4500/hr rate that is needed to make it. I noticed kliqtrack lags quite a bit

My original post was way off. It doesn't make sense to compare this to GPGPU. There is a lot of technical details making this project hard for a quick sound-bite sell.

- source code for the FPGA (in verilog) + documentation will be released too
- the FPGA does the interface between the Epiphany & the ARM CPU, so you can hack that, or just see how it's done
- the HDMI port is implemented over the FPGA too. It has audio, so this could work for HTPC & XMBC.
- There's leftover FPGA logic for other stuff. Plus there is another general IO port available that's attached to the FPGA
- All the dev software & docs will be included
- they have several new reward levels
- there is an integer unit on each core, not just floating point
- getting the ARM CPU on a prototyping board costs $300-$400. This is a deal for this part alone

bbl
 
I would donate if this machine could be used for final rendering 3d studio max and maya work files.

But since there is no software for this and I am not going to write any I do not see the point of donating.

When it gets software support I can use I will buy one.

Right now the only thing I got is a bunch of my old ass PCs connected using backburner for rendering Most studios have had supercomputers on site for rendering since the early 90s having one in the house would rule for me.

http://wikihelp.autodesk.com/Creati...allation_Guide/0005-Concepts5/0010-Autodesk10

then again my x79 pc is as fast as some super computers from the early 90's.....
 
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I can't really take these guys seriously. They're up in the clouds.

http://www.adapteva.com/white-papers/ten-myths-debunked-by-the-epiphany-iv-64-core-accelerator-chip/

Any design engineer who thinks you get perfect performance scaling AND performance/watt scaling from adding more chips to a mesh has no idea what they are doing.

PIG2n.png


You get losses from overloaded routers, need for additional bits on the chip to make things work with more cores. Then there are the issues supplying power and clock lines to dense ares of the mesh. They obviously have not gone beyond a back-of-the-napkin sketch, but they swear it will scale perfectly (hey, you trust me with a million dollars right :D

And never mind that the CPU is in-order, with no branch prediction no threading to keep it fed. You'll enjoy the benefits of waiting every time you take a branch (or mispredict and take a 6-cycle penalty...either way you're waiting)! This cuts dangerously into the "official" GFLOPs number comparison chart, which features CPUs with OOE and features like advanced branch predictors and hyperthreading. I guarantee the E1G4 doesn't get anywhere near HALF the advertised 1.4 GFLOPs with real code that does real work, but most of the CPUs in this chart get much closer to their theoretical numbers!

5Fxxc.png


I just hope you don't mind 32KB per-CPU (that you have to manage in software - it's not cache!), and a flat address space (hope you weren't planning on porting your code since you have to program for this address space to the metal). It's like we're back in the 1970s again! And don't forget your disappointment when your realize that you can't run any modern OS on top of these things, as there's no MMU -have fun coding your own hackjob of an operating system!
 
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