[Beowulf] recommendations on ARM distro?

[Prentice Bisbal]

On 05/15/2016 12:27 PM, C Bergström wrote:
> On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 11:59 PM, Gerald Henriksen <ghenriks at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 15 May 2016 09:39:50 +0200, you wrote:
>>
>>> Was actually thinking of a clustered server setup using 64bit arm board
>>> if possible
>> First problem is that while the RPi3 has a 64bit cpu, there is only
>> support for 32bit operating systems (you need binary blobs to get
>> Linux running on these ARM boards, and for RPi3 they only support
>> 32bit).
>>
>> [the Pi people chose the chip for its speed while maintaining
>> backwards compatibility, thus they don't support or care about 64bit]
>>
>> Your next problem is that there is only 1GB RAM, and most of the I/O
>> goes through a single USB2 port that has reports of being buggy.
>>
>> The RPi3 (or any of the Pi models) can certainly be used for
>> educational purposes regarding a cluster, but unlikely to be actually
>> useful.
>>
>> If you really want a cheap 64bit ARM board there are better options
>> available that actually run 64bit Linux though you may need to pay a
>> bit more.  Best advice is to find the ARM community for your preferred
>> version of Linux and see what boards they support given the
>> problematic nature of the cheap ARM boards.
>>
>>
>> Is there hope for the future of 64bit ARM?
>>
>> Maybe.
>>
>> Red Hat is pushing hard for the the ARM vendors to implement the
>> standard BIOS/UEFI boot process for AAarch64 boards which should
>> remove most of the issues booting Linux on AAarch64, but the ARM
>> hardware side has been very slow in coming to market and the cheapest
>> board so far supporting a BIOS/UEFI is in the $300 range I believe.
>>
>>
>> But for now, until the AAarch64 board makers can get their act
>> together, for getting work done (like the 3D rendering you mention in
>> another message) you are better off in the Intel/AMD world.
> Very nice reply Gerald, not meaning to nit, but for certain workloads
> I'd emphasize that accelerators make more sense than Intel.
>
> Power and ARM have some uphill battles ahead of them, but I'm
> optimistic that in the next 2-4 years we're going to see Intel go
> against increasingly interesting products.
>
It sounds lie you should look at E4 Computer Engineering's ARKA series 
servers. They are an Italian company that was at SC14 and SC15.  Their 
ARKA servers have ARM 64-bit processors with NVidia GPUs and 
InfiniBand.  If you really want to build an ARM-based rending cluster, 
that would be you best option, all though I'm sure it will cost a LOT 
more than a bunch of Raspberry Pi's.

RK004 Server (Cavium Processor): 
http://cms-en.e4company.com//media/35020/e4-rk004-0416ps.pdf
RK003 Server (Applied Micro X-Gene processor): 
http://cms-en.e4company.com//media/35044/e4-rk003_0416ps.pdf

--
Prentice


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