[Beowulf] recommendations on ARM distro?

[Egan Ford]

Entertaining thread.  Instead of replying to multiple posts I'll just
summarize my $0.02 here.

IMHO, spend the extra ~$5US an use Odroid C2s instead of RPi3.  They
have 4x2.0 GHz processors, 2GB RAM, and GigE (with ok GigE performance
850mbit/s with iperf (5 switch hops between client and server)).  The
included heatsink takes a while (10 min at full CPU util) to saturate
at room temp (75F, 30% humi tested).  Dry cool room may improve this.
NOTE: ARM SBCs drop to about 1/2 perf under load without heatsink or
fan.  The only outlier I have is the pine64, oddly stable, but has
other issues.

As for the cost of KVM gear, Odroid's use a serial console.  The cable
(v3.3 serial to TTL to USB adapter) is $13.  Pickup a single cable,
just in case.

The C2 runs Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit.  Just dd the image and boot.  No need
for KVM or console cable, SSH is enabled by default.  Just ssh in and
type sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target to dump the GUI
login and overhead.

I use cheap 60 GB SSD USB sticks for heavy I/O needs.  Still USB2, but
better and more durable than SSD/eMMC.

I cluster various ARM SBCs, not for HPC, but as build farms for IoT
research.  All of our IoT applications are in Docker containers.  We
build/test on odroids and run on RPi2s.  We have had limited luck with
cross compiling, and almost no luck with cross building docker
containers.  qemu arm emulation on x86 just isn't worth it when you
can get the C2 for < $40 and it is a lot faster.

For top performance we use Odroid XU4s.  ~$77.  8-core with USB3.
These benchmark ~2x faster than C2s and the included fan helps sustain
performance (but is so noisy that I keep one the basement and the
other three 10 miles away in someone else's basement).  The XU4 is
32-bit.  I would not be surprised if an XU5 with 64-bit was released
this year.  One of our XU4s has a 2in tall copper heatsink replacement
for the fan, so it is possible to make office friendly.

You can get all this fun stuff from ameridroid.com.  I've been using
them for 9 months under load without issue.

Oh, avoid the Odroid C1.  A5 vs A53 (rpi3).  IOW, single vs dual
issue.  The rpi3 with a heatsink will outperform the 1.5 GHz C1.  And
with a very good heatsink it'll smoke it.

Cheers,

Egan

P.S. my PDU: http://www.amazon.com/Anker-10-Port-Charger-Multi-Port-PowerPort/dp/B00YRYS4T4
+ http://www.amazon.com/Anker-Premium-Android-Samsung-Motorola/dp/B00N8VHW72

P.P.S. if you need a true KVM crash cart for some ARM SBCs then search
ebay for a "motorola atrix lapdock".  No mods required.  Just need a
few cables.


On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 2:08 AM, Andrew M.A. Cater
<amacater at galactic.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> On Thu, May 12, 2016 at 11:26:37PM +0200, jaquilina wrote:
>> Not wanting to hijack this thread hassle anyone tried to cluster raspi 3's? What distribution would you recommend for a pi3 cluster?
>> Out of curiosity would somethinglike gentoo and it's cross development setup get you what you want in the form of binaries?
>>
>>
>
> Google Raspberry Pi Bramble
>
> If you're using the Raspberry Pi 3 - Raspbian is the only game in town at the moment to fully support it, I think.
>
> Note: although it's a 64 bit processor, firmware currently released hobbles it to 32 bits for a lot of things.
> It also needs to be the very latest Raspbian released in the last couple of days.
>
> Debian works on Raspberry Pi 2 quite nicely because it's ARM7
>
> Gentoo - meh - I'm not sure that the cross-development tools would work well.
>
> Debian has significant experience in this cross-compilation lark :)
>
> ... but I would back Debian on this one.
>
> AndyC
>
> amacater at debian.org among others :)
>
>
>> Sent from Samsung tablet.-------- Original message --------From: Mark Hahn <hahn at mcmaster.ca> Date: 12/05/2016  20:59  (GMT+01:00) To: Beowulf Mailing List <beowulf at beowulf.org> Subject: [Beowulf] recommendations on ARM distro?
>> Hi all,
>> we have a (tiny) experimental ARM box - based on Cavium ThunderX,
>> but have run into basic issues with distros (ie, ARM+ldap+ubuntu=fail).
>>
>> If you're using ARM (on something bigger than a RPi),
>> what distro are you using?
>>
>> thanks,
>> mark hahn
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