[HN Gopher] Turing Pi V2 is here
___________________________________________________________________
Turing Pi V2 is here
Author : rbanffy
Score : 199 points
Date : 2021-08-25 08:27 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (turingpi.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (turingpi.com)
| fxj wrote:
| This could power a portable audio studio. Use the CMs for
| different VST instruments and sound effects. Zynthian is just
| using a single raspi, but 6 of these beasts would make up a
| complete audio studio with multi channel recording and real time
| effects and synths. Zynthian provides accurate emulations of
| classic instruments: Grand piano, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, pipe organ,
| Hammond organ, combo organ, Minimoog, DX-7, Oberheim OB-X,
| JX-10... In the 80s I would have given a limb for a machine like
| that. Put it into a 19 inch case, slap a large display and 16
| Knobs and sliders on the front panel, give it 8 line ins and midi
| connectivity and you have the ultimate audio studio in a box.
| Sell it for 1000 bucks and it sells better than sliced bread.
|
| https://zynthian.org/
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| Why would I not just get a Nord Stage 3 instead?
| Marazan wrote:
| Because a Nord is three grand?
| scns wrote:
| Korg Minilogue and its descendants allow uploading of user
| oscillators, way cheaper at ~500. Plenty of YT tutorials out
| there.
|
| (edit) one of the first i found:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouGBnYXUT40
| boffinAudio wrote:
| Because the Nord Stage 3 won't allow you to easily add your
| own code to the device for experimenting with new synthesis
| techniques?
| jmrm wrote:
| The Nord costs about 10 times what this does.
| boffinAudio wrote:
| As a very happy Zynthian user: YES TO THIS!
|
| I will get a Turing Pi ASAP to play with just this.
|
| It should be noted however that even the bare bones Zynthian
| system is capable of doing a _LOT_ of voices. Plus, you don 't
| have to go with the original Zynthian hardware - I have a small
| stack of devices from Audiophonics (I-SABRE RaspTouch - [1])
| that all run ZynthianOS perfectly well, and it is a very nice
| and easy way to add polyphony/DSP power to the setup.
|
| EDIT: to note, this is just a perfect example of how open
| source projects inspire innovation - the ZynthianOS is free and
| amazing, and the Zynthian project itself has its own hardware
| designed for the purpose - but it can run on other peoples Pi-
| based hardware as well, and there is such a wide plethora of
| audiophile devices out there to pick and choose from. Having
| the TuringPi architecture available, I can imagine its only a
| matter of a few months before we see exactly the system -
| multi-core/expander-type synth modules - appear on the market,
| making ZynthianOS even more powerful ..
|
| [1] - https://www.audiophonics.fr/en/network-audio-players-
| rasptou...
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| Wow, this thing is pretty neat!
| linsomniac wrote:
| This seems like a good alternative for the people who don't want
| to run old rackmount gear for a homelab, in the thread yesterday.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28261768
|
| Part of my reason for setting up a home lab was for cluster
| experimentation, so the suggestions of "just get a Mini-ITX
| computer" weren't a good fit. Yes, I could set up multiple VMs
| there, I wanted multiple chassis.
| rbanffy wrote:
| The fine folks at Pine64 have a similar cluster board, but it
| uses their own little modules (smaller and cheaper).
|
| The cluster https://www.pine64.org/clusterboard/
|
| The compute node: https://pine64.com/product/sopine-a64-compute-
| module/
|
| The AI node: https://pine64.com/product/soedge-ai-neural-module/
| ta988 wrote:
| They are only 2GB RAM modules though.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Yes. But almost twice as many ;-)
|
| Fits well in an education setting, when you manage a cluster
| in order to manage a cluster.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Note that the Turing Pi v1 has 7 slots for Pi CM/CM3/CM3+
| modules, but it has been in short supply as each batch they
| made has sold out pretty quickly.
| wanderer_ wrote:
| Jeff Geerling! I'm excited for the video that I know is
| forthcoming, I'm haven't even looked at Turing Pi's official
| release because I want to hear your take on it :)
| adolph wrote:
| The use of non-CM4 connector is interesting. Do you know why
| that is?
|
| Edit: Oh, I see, they are using a daughtercard method to
| connect the CM4 form factor. Probably nicer to keep
| everything upright and packed parallel.
|
| Edit: Also, thank you for your K8s book, I'm an avid user
| although I need to recheck Leanpub to see if there are any
| recent updates.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| CM4 requires both boards to be stacked, so it doesn't work
| for something like this. IIRC there are also problems with
| the connector layout assuming zero tolerance.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| The daughtercard also allows them to adapt to a Jetson Nano
| form factor, which makes for an interesting hybrid board.
| rwmj wrote:
| CM3 uses a laptop-RAM-style SO-DIMM form factor and
| connector. CM4 changed to a different form factor and
| connector.
| freedomben wrote:
| I have an obsessive love for Pine64 but man it's hard to order
| stuff. Always out of stock.
| jonititan wrote:
| I'm quite interested in this but there seems very little
| explanation. I found the wiki has more but I'd really like to
| see a good review of the cluster in use. Whether it is useful
| as more than a local self learning system.
| https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/SOPINE
|
| https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/SOEdge
|
| https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Clusterboard
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| I hope they keep the 20-pin ATX power connector. The latest
| Turing Pi V1 boards are missing it, and one must have an ATX-
| compatible PSU with the 4-pin motherboard connector instead. Most
| ATX PSUs have this, but not all 1U cases come with such PSUs.
| Supermicro's CSE-512 doesn't have one, and it's a shame that the
| V1 is not compatible with it, because they're the cheapest 1U
| Supermicro cases on eBay. No one is buying them, but had this
| point of compatibility been preserved, they could have gone to
| better use instead of the scrap heap.
| foxfluff wrote:
| What I'd like to see is faster node-to-node interconnects.
| Gigabit ethernet is very outdated.
| rwmj wrote:
| Faster and more of them. Unfortunately they're limited by what
| the CM4 exposes, which is gigabit ethernet, a single lane of
| PCIe gen 2, and a bunch of GPIO pins.
| hinkley wrote:
| Unfortunate they dropped to only 4 slots per board too. The
| value goes up with each slot.
| rawoke083600 wrote:
| What is this ? I have no idea ??
| codeflo wrote:
| I know it's a HN cliche to comment on this, but it's also true: I
| went several links deep, then looked at the homepage and the FAQ,
| and _still_ have no idea what this product is or who it's for.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's kind of this:
|
| https://blog.fosketts.net/2012/02/21/cubix-ers-blade-server-...
|
| but for Raspberry Pi's and Nvidia Jetsons.
| mshockwave wrote:
| same here, their website should have a one-line description of
| what this board is/for. Though I did find a short answer on
| potential use cases from FAQ in one of the pages (I think it's
| the Turing Pi V2 product page?)
| mattowen_uk wrote:
| I think I'll wait for (and enjoy!) the obligatory Jeff
| Geerling[1] video[2] on it.
|
| --
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=geerlingguy
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/c/jeffgeerling
| ta988 wrote:
| oh I didn't know he had a youtube channel. I knew him through
| his excellent Ansible modules.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I'm also here on a daily basis ;)
|
| I'm hoping to get my hands on a board soon... I think
| they're still brushing up the prototype though, trying to
| get it to a more final production state.
| sponaugle wrote:
| Excellent. Your videos on the various Pi clusters have
| been fantastic. I'm looking forward to your review of
| this new updated board.
| gtvwill wrote:
| They look to be great devices for edge compute. I can slap a
| Jetson in one slot and pi's in the other three. Cheap, easy to
| fix, no expensive support contracts. I'll be looking at
| throwing them out into rural locations/farms. I can get x86
| nucs but tbh they lack the customisability in this has. This is
| awesome for industrial applications.
| notRobot wrote:
| Doesn't apply here. From the homepage:
|
| ----------
|
| What can I do with Turing Pi?
|
| Home server (homelab) and cloud apps hosting
|
| Learn Kubernetes, Docker Swarm, Serverless, Microservices on
| bare metal
|
| Cloud-native apps testing environment
|
| Learn concepts of distributed Machine Learning apps
|
| Prototype and learn cluster applications, parallel computing,
| and distributed computing concepts
|
| Host K8S, K3S, Minecraft, Plex, Owncloud, Nextcloud, Seafile,
| Minio, Tensorflow
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| That says what it is for, but not what it is.
| moonbug wrote:
| Ironically I thought just the opposite.
| codeflo wrote:
| No, I saw that, I just don't understand it. I can do all of
| that with a PC. Is this a PC? A more powerful Raspberry Pi?
| What does the ability to "learn concepts" even mean? I learn
| concepts from books, what does the hardware do?
| rwmj wrote:
| I wonder if this video helps:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zXG4ySy1m8 Jeff Geerling
| "Why would you build a Raspberry Pi Cluster?"
| loxias wrote:
| Don't worry, it's not just you. I learn concepts by
| building and tinkering (and reading specifications), so
| you'd think I'm a target market. But when I wanted to get
| some hands on experience with a cluster file system, for a
| job, I spun up a cluster of 5 vms on... my normal computer.
|
| 4 seems like a very useless number to me. 4 raspis is more
| expensive and less useful than a used dual xeon on ebay. I
| could imagine _maybe_ there 's a use for something with 16
| slots? or at least 8? But I don't get these cluster boards
| (or, for that matter, storage enclosures!) which presume I
| can do something fundamentally different with 4 small
| computes than 1.
| rwmj wrote:
| The original Turing Pi had 7 slots (wish it had even
| more!). I do feel that was better, because it really
| forces you to manage it as a cluster.
|
| Spinning up VMs is sort of fine, but they don't have
| quite the performance or management characteristics of a
| real cluster. The network is slow, the nodes individually
| are not very powerful, you have to work out how to image
| each physical machine, nodes break or have I/O errors,
| ...
| chubot wrote:
| Yeah exactly, my first thought is that a normal multicore
| PC is going to be not just more powerful, but more power
| efficient and cost efficient. It's a fun idea but I
| wouldn't be interested unless they publish some
| comparisons.
|
| Basically everything here can be done on a single
| multicore computer (which is already a distributed system
| in many respects):
|
| https://turingpi.com/12-amazing-raspberry-pi-cluster-use-
| cas...
| rbanffy wrote:
| > maybe there's a use for something with 16 slots? or at
| least 8?
|
| You can always connect 2 or 4 of these together.
|
| But I understand what you mean. A project I want to build
| one day, when I have the time and learn ethernet
| interfacing through PCB's is to build a single board
| cluster of Octavo SoM modules. They are individually
| inexpensive and it'd be relatively easy to build a board
| with a dozen of them connected to a switch chip.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| This board is a very convenient way (maybe the most
| convenient one I've seen) to setup a bare-metal cluster of
| computers. Not just multiple cores, not just multiple VMs,
| four entirely separate ARM computers communicating over a
| real hardware network. One Alternative to boards like this
| is to connect multiple SBCs together, with all the wiring,
| and also some mechanical support. Another (more powerful
| alternative) is to install some kind of server rack at
| home. More expensive, too. Using multiple virtual machines
| is also not quite the same.
|
| What people use it for? Mostly to learn how to deal with
| problems that arise from managing a cluster and running
| software on it. Can you build a website that tolerates
| getting one of the nodes or hard drives turned off?
|
| Some people use such solutions for productive things, like
| a Home Server, but a store-bought NAS or a single PC is
| usually more performant. A PI cluster might be less power
| hungry in some scenarios.
|
| Some people use them as build/test platforms for code that
| should run on ARM architectures. Others have used them to
| host a website from their internet connection (I know...).
|
| Some people just have fun tinkering with such things....
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Their two use cases are edge infra -- horizontally scaled
| server applications on a power and cabinet space budget -- or
| as a workstation for workflows that can benefit from
| distributed compute power.
|
| I could imagine the latter might be handy if you're doing CAD
| with rendering in the Amazon rainforest and don't have 5A of
| power for x86_64 + GPU. Maybe.
|
| It definitely seems like a solution in search of a problem.
| Happy to be proven wrong though.
|
| See "Use Cases", here: https://turingpi.com/turing-
| pi-2-announcement/
| rbanffy wrote:
| There's a company here in Ireland, Cainthus, that does
| workplace wellbeing for dairy cows. It does so by
| continuously analysing video feeds and detecting behaviors
| that could indicate stress or other environmental factors
| that make the cows unhappy. Management could be done by the
| RPi while the inference could run on one or more Jetson
| boards. These little machines are very friendly for embedded
| work.
| rwmj wrote:
| I have the earlier 7 node version which runs Kubernetes,
| following Jeff Geerling's guide
| (https://www.youtube.com/c/JeffGeerling).
|
| Actually I wish they hadn't reduced the number of slots to 4,
| because part of the "fun" is dealing with the fact that with 7
| nodes, using ssh and individual node management is no way to
| manage a cluster, so you're forced to treat it as a real
| cluster. I feel with 4, I might be tempted to individually
| manage each node. But I also understand why changes in the Pi
| Compute Module 4 made this necessary. The CM4 is physically
| much larger than the CM3.
|
| Edit: Actually my _real_ wish is for a compute module that has
| more I /O channels. I would love to build a hypercube-style
| supercomputer (like the Meiko Computing Surface) but these
| require 5+ high speed I/O interconnects say to build a 32+ node
| cluster. I wonder if PCIe offers a solution?
| sponaugle wrote:
| I too would be interested in playing around with more
| processor to processor interconnects. Just for fun I built a
| 16 way SAMD21 board that used the serial interconnects to
| make a hypercube arrangement and it was very cool to play
| with.
|
| It would be possible to build an interconnect over PCIe, but
| of course it might just be better to use a 10g ethernet PCIe
| interface chip for each node and a local to PCB network.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| Raspberry Pi has a compute module version: CM4, which is
| basically a pared down RPi4 with almost no IO options. This is
| a board for CM4 (and, apparently, NVidia Jetson) that lets you
| power, network and communicate with several CM4 boards in a
| cluster setup.
| vultour wrote:
| But... why? Every other thing doesn't work on ARM, so what's
| the point of a rpi cluster?
| evgen wrote:
| Short version is that it is a custom board into which you can
| plug multiple RPi compute modules (and now some Jetson modules)
| to create a miniature version of a blade server system; this
| board is the backplane of that compute module blade system. Use
| it to create your own edge cluster system I guess; it does not
| seem particularly useful beyond being a neat curiosity when you
| put RPi CMs into it, but as a GPU/CUDA node filled with Jetson
| modules there is some interesting possibility there for people
| looking for a cheap local cluster for training ML models.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| 4x Jetson nano would cost $240, the Turing board will
| probably cost around $100 (it looks like they haven't decided
| yet) and you get 1,88 tflops; you can add 50 bucks and get
| GTX 1060 with 4.4 tflops _and_ you can play games.
| platz wrote:
| But can you do a 4x/cluster SYN flood with a GTX 1060
| dnadler wrote:
| Not sure that's quite a fair comparison, because you'll
| need quite a bit more hardware to use the GTX 1060, and I
| _think_ that the Turing board + Jetson setup would be all-
| inclusive (except a power supply and chassis, I suppose)?
|
| I could be wrong about that though.
| datameta wrote:
| Agreed save for the caveat that a 4 RPi compute system could
| actually do quite a bit of Edge ML. Even a single RPi is
| enough for >15fps image recog.
| kreetx wrote:
| And "RPi CMs" are Raspberry Pi Compute Modules, so apparently
| these: https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-
| module-4/?varia...
|
| Ironically, the adapter images that you use to plug in the
| RPis (which might give you a clue) don't currently load on
| the Turing Pi homepage.
| aejnsn wrote:
| Too bad it's impossible to find RPi CM3 modules in stock for my
| Turing Pi V1 that has been sitting in its box for a couple months
| now! :(
| mciancia wrote:
| Pretty cool project, but on the other hand, if it ends up costing
| 200usd this is gonna be pretty expensive. And tbh, what is the
| point of doing raspberry pi clusters in general?
|
| NUCs/usff PCs are more powerfull, cheaper and easier to upgrade
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| One of the points is to have a cluster of separate hardware
| computers communicating over a hardware network. Not for
| performance reasons, but rather to learn to deal with the
| limitations.
|
| One NUC is still one NUC. There may even be workloads where 4
| CM4 modules (or even Jetsons) beat a modest NUC. Not sure
| where, though.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Yeah nucs really aren't that great. Minimal GPIO if any. No
| mPCIE slots.... And they are expensive.
| nicolaslem wrote:
| The mPCIe connector is mostly dead, it has been largely
| replaced by M.2 and NUCs have at least one M.2 connector.
| rkangel wrote:
| NUCs are surprisingly expensive. This plus 4x Pi CM4s is about
| 300 USD (if your pricing is right - might be a little high).
| That's still under a NUC.
| mciancia wrote:
| Ok, new NUCs might be a bit expensive. But I can get lenovo
| tiny m72 or something like that, with core i3, 4GB of ram and
| 320gb hdd for <70usd. I would assume 4 of those are going to
| be similar in terms of size as turingpi build, much more
| powerfull and consume just a bit of power more (have a few
| similar machines, they consume something like 10W unless
| under heavy load)
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| I felt that expensive is subjective in this context. It is
| expensive as a full kit NUC, yes. However, barebone NUC is
| cheaper and I see a few of them are in $300 range with
| various of i3 and i5. I seen a very cheap $200 range barebone
| NUC last month, however it use low end cpu, i3 or Celeron.
| NegatioN wrote:
| So, I have clearly not been "paying attention in class".
|
| This is some sort of board to connect several Pi's, and make a
| "cluster"?
|
| What are the advantages to simply connecting them via my LAN,
| except cable management?
| mongol wrote:
| Isn't cable management a pretty inconvenient thing? This also
| includes a switch. You need plenty of cables to replace this.
| NegatioN wrote:
| Not trying to minimize cable management, just trying to see
| if I'm missing anything here or not :)
| n4bz0r wrote:
| I guess it is. But I suspect the price (as it's usually the
| case with "cool" rpi things) isn't going to look like one of
| a cable management solution. INB4: $200
| spijdar wrote:
| The ability to take Jetson cards is actually a really strong
| point in its favor IMO. Raspberry Pis by themselves aren't
| incredibly interesting in clusters except for pedagogical
| reasons, but with some Nvidia cards running whatever on CUDA,
| maybe with some RPis mixed in to do management/support tasks,
| and the built-in BMC, this could be pretty sweet for the right
| task.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| I'm not sure these NVidia cards are very powerful. One decent
| GPU in a PC may blow several clusters of these out of the
| water. I haven't checked, though.
| spijdar wrote:
| In raw performance, probably. The benefit these have (at
| least purportedly) is they're very energy efficient,
| consuming little power (and generating little heat) for
| comparatively large throughput.
|
| So I can imagine someone wanting a few of these on a desk,
| running inference on some models or something, maybe as a
| small back-end for a hobby project. It may still be more
| power efficient to just use regular GPUs, but I suspect
| these win out because of the tight coupling between "CUDA
| cores" and the CPU.
|
| Now, is that worth spending a bunch (many hundreds) of
| dollars on a carrier board and these Jetson modules? For
| me, no, but I at least see why it may appeal to some
| people.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| It's not just the networking. Which would be awkward enough.
| It's also power and IO/Storage.
|
| Just take a look at the PI Clusters people have built, the
| volume is a few times that of the boards alone.
|
| Also, the CM4 is a bit cheaper than a comparable "complete"
| SBC, though I don't know if you'd come out ahead with the price
| of the board.
| amelius wrote:
| The entire purpose of a PCB is cable management ;)
| OJFord wrote:
| Ha, that's a good one... also somewhat true! By extension,
| ASICs really are just about cleaner PCB layout.
|
| (Yes, _yes_ , there _are_ non-aesthetic physical, electrical,
| designed, and parasitic effects of cables vs PCBs and vice-
| versa. Spoil-sport.)
| rbanffy wrote:
| > ASICs really are just about cleaner PCB layout
|
| ASIC's are just very small PCB's with all discrete
| components etched on the same material ;-)
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes, exactly, thus tidying ('mother') PCB layout in the
| same way that a PCB tidies all the cables into a small
| arrangement with all discrete components fixed in the
| same plane.
| nmstoker wrote:
| These connect Pi Compute Modules, which are distinct from
| regular a Pi in a few ways (eg they don't function without a
| host board of some sort, so don't have certain things on board
| like network connectors, GPIO etc) but putting that aside,
| you'd get to a reasonably similar place if you hooked up some
| regular Pi's, it's simply more wires with the regular ones.
| 3np wrote:
| I think the biggest differentiator here is direct access to
| the PCIe bus and SATA that doesn't go via USB - that's
| something you can't get on a normal Rpi.
| one_off_comment wrote:
| It doesn't seem to say, but do RPi CM3 and CM3+ boards work with
| this new one?
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| Currently, no. Only the V1 supports those. It would be
| interesting if a hybrid solution was available.
| amenghra wrote:
| Reminds me of the good old "imagine a beowulf cluster of these"
| jokes.
|
| For those who don't remember, the origin of the joke came about
| shortly after the first beowulf clusters were announced -
| thereafter every time a new computer was announced on Slashdot,
| somebody would say "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these".
| p_l wrote:
| Don't forget that one of the milestone things in Beowulf
| cluster was Stone Soup cluster, and the whole Beowulf cluster
| thing was heavily about "we don't have money for supercomputer,
| we hacked something from random junk"
| scns wrote:
| Like Google did in the early days.
| josefx wrote:
| I thought early google essentially ran on a university
| cluster?
| p_l wrote:
| Early early google seems to have used scavenged machines
| from university as soon as it outgrew what was
| essentially a phd project? I recall a photo of random
| assortment of Sun sparcstations and the like.
|
| Much later was the infamous cardboard cluster.
| liotier wrote:
| My jam was rather Openmosix, but same vibe: throw whatever
| you have into the cluster and be happy with the inefficiency
| because those resources would sit unused otherwise !
| Poiesis wrote:
| Note, the page says "4x 1-gigabit ports are allocated for each
| computing node" which is incorrect if there are seven total ports
| as specified elsewhere. It should instead say something like "4x
| 1-gigabit ports are allocated, one for each computing node".
| the-dude wrote:
| It is not here, it is not available and the price is unknown.
|
| So it is unobtainium.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| And given the chip shortage it's going to be out of stock
| pretty soon after launch.
| 3np wrote:
| This could be the perfect base for a decently low-cost but
| performant HA hashicorp cluster!
|
| Get 3 of these boards, each with 3-4 modules:
|
| * CM4: Consul server * CM4: Nomad server * CM4: Vault server *
| any: Whatever else you require
| (LDAP/victoriametrics/grafana/wireguard/nomad
| worker/DNS/storage/etc)
|
| Optionally add router board(s) (think PCEngines APU or similar)
| for load balancer/bastion hosts/gateways.
|
| Extend with any kind of machines for additional Nomad workers.
| pkaye wrote:
| How is the storage accessed by the compute nodes? Do only some
| nodes get direct access and the rest need to use nfs or
| something?
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(page generated 2021-08-25 23:01 UTC)