[Beowulf] Mobos for portable use

[Charlie Peck]

We’ve made 2 board units in the past that fit in Pelican’s briefcase form-factor container, it was easy to use them in airports, the back of a VW Vanagon on the way to conferences, etc. 

Now with NVIDIA and others producing really nice, powerful, small boards boards Jim is correct, it’s possible to build something at least 2x Moore’s faster, smaller in size and power envelope, etc.

charlie

> On Jan 19, 2017, at 16:48, Lux, Jim (337C) <james.p.lux at jpl.nasa.gov> wrote:
> 
> Exactly.. but with newer, faster boards..
>  
>  
> Jim Lux
> (818)354-2075 (office)
> (818)395-2714 (cell)
>  
> From: Beowulf [mailto:beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org] On Behalf Of Hamilton, Scott
> Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2017 8:58 AM
> To: beowulf at beowulf.org
> Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Mobos for portable use
>  
> The Little FE portable HPC cluster might be of interest on this topic.  It is an HPC system build with small form factor motherboards to get a 6 node Beowulf cluster that can be powered off a standard 110 receptacle and used as a training system in public schools as it can be run in the classroom.  The boards they use are not power house boards, but the size of the cluster would make it possible it a battery pack to run a backpack Beowulf cluster.  Their website is www.littlefe.net
>  
> Scott
>  
> Scott Hamilton
> Solution Architect II
> Atos Big Data & Security – NAO
> (573)324-7124
> scott.hamilton at atos.net
>  
> From: Beowulf [mailto:beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org] On Behalf Of John Hearns
> Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2017 9:35 AM
> To: beowulf at beowulf.org
> Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Mobos for portable use
>  
> Jim,
> I am a big fan of the Xeon-D but they take 45Watts for the CPU alone. Full featured Xeon and two 10gig ports on board though.
>  
>  
> I would be looking at one of the Nvidia boards intended for in-car systems.
>  
>  
>  
> From: Beowulf [beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org] on behalf of Lux, Jim (337C) [james.p.lux at jpl.nasa.gov]
> Sent: 19 January 2017 14:36
> To: beowulf at beowulf.org
> Subject: [Beowulf] Mobos for portable use
> 
> This comes up every few years..
> Someone at work was complaining at lunch that the latest laptops have nice screens but don’t have much memory, largely because they want to keep the battery size reasonable ("thin is in”).. my suggestion was “well, why don’t you just use your laptop as the user interface to a bigger more powerful compute node/nodes”
> That devolved into a “but what I really want is the horsepower of my desktop machine”..
>  
> Leaving aside the “use the network to connect to a CPU somewhere else”
>  
> We then started discussing whether anyone makes motherboards with high performance processors, lots of RAM, maybe a GPU for computation (but no display hooked up), but none of the other stuff, and then run off batteries..
> Like a battery powered Intel NUC, but with way more horsepower
> The top of the line NUC seems to have a 19V, 65W power supply..  arstechnica says they burn about 50W running full out.   Let’s say you want to run for 4 hours, so you need 200 Whr.
>  
> A 18650 Li battery is 3.4 Ah @ 3.6V, that’s about 23 Wh, so you’d need 9 of them.  That’s not all that big a package.. Arranged in a row, they’d be 65mm by 162 mm..  
>  
> Prismatic (brick shaped) batteries are 350 Wh/Liter, 135Wh/kg.. so 200 Wh is going to be about half a liter (50x100x100 mm) and 1.5 kg
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
> James Lux, P.E.
> Task Manager, DHFR Space Testbed
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory
> 4800 Oak Grove Drive, MS 161-213
> Pasadena CA 91109
> +1(818)354-2075
> +1(818)395-2714 (cell)
>  
> Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the company. Employees of XMA Ltd are expressly required not to make defamatory statements and not to infringe or authorise any infringement of copyright or any other legal right by email communications. Any such communication is contrary to company policy and outside the scope of the employment of the individual concerned. The company will not accept any liability in respect of such communication, and the employee responsible will be personally liable for any damages or other liability arising. XMA Limited is registered in England and Wales (registered no. 2051703). Registered Office: Wilford Industrial Estate, Ruddington Lane, Wilford, Nottingham, NG11 7EP
> _______________________________________________
> Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf at beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing
> To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf