A super computer for everyone!

[Santee]

Looks like the "computers" that are just smartphone parts, but have standard ports.

 

[Quietlyawesome94]

So I guess you can't play games on this?

Games like Skyrim and such? No. This is running on CPUs with the ARM architecture. Most games are designed with Microsoft directX and X86 in mind.

 

[RupeeClock]

A shitload of cores doesn't mean a shitload of power, and it sure as hell won't be true 45Ghz.
You don't just add up individual cores, more than that software has to be tailored to utilise multiple cores, and few do unless they are specialist software such as render farms.
Let's divide that 45Ghz figure by the 64 core figure they gave, *gasp*, that's just 700Mhz per core!
Now suppose you have software that only utilises four cores at best, it'll get 2.8Ghz of performance out of that.
This is as opposed to a regular Quadcore processor rated at 2.8Ghz, which if all four cores were utilised could operate at something akin to 11.2Ghz.

Actually Ghz isn't even a reliable way to tell the processing speed of a processor. It's merely the clock speed, it takes well designed architecture that minimizes every possible transmission to get the fastest calculations. For how cheap these processors are made out to be, I have serious doubts you will accomplish much of anything with these.

It's too good to be true, you'll probably get what's advertised but it will likely fall far beneath your expectations. You'll probably be better off grabbing a Raspberry Pi.

 

[Janthran]

So I guess you can't play games on this?

Games like Skyrim and such? No. This is running on CPUs with the ARM architecture. Most games are designed with Microsoft directX and X86 in mind.

What if I have a Linux version of a game?

 

[exangel]

So I guess you can't play games on this?

Games like Skyrim and such? No. This is running on CPUs with the ARM architecture. Most games are designed with Microsoft directX and X86 in mind.

What if I have a Linux version of a game?

There are ARM ports of Linux. (edit: Obviously it comes with Ubuntu.. but there are other distros as well that will presumably work..)

 

[RupeeClock]

So I guess you can't play games on this?

Games like Skyrim and such? No. This is running on CPUs with the ARM architecture. Most games are designed with Microsoft directX and X86 in mind.

What if I have a Linux version of a game?

There are ARM ports of Linux. (edit: Obviously it comes with Ubuntu.. but there are other distros as well that will presumably work..)

Isn't Raspberry Pi already a rather nice ARM processor board, with SD card and USB slots?

This project seems to be LIKE that, but geared towards being able to process tons of applications at once, or maybe one or two applications utilising a ton of cores.

Also I was thinking about x86/64 processors with those figures earlier. A theoretical 45Ghz on ARM processors is FAR more significant than on x86/x64 processors.

 

[tueidj]

The Raspberry Pi's CPU is out of date and doesn't even have an FPU (there are much nicer ARM boards, you just need to look). A dual-core Cortex A9 would outperform it by 10x, even without the 16-core Epiphany accelerator.

 

[Thanatos Telos]

But can it run Crysis?

The correct question is: Will it blend?

 

[notmeanymore]

Why does it feel like half of these posts are recycled from this thread?

Get some new material, folks.

That aside, I'd be interested to see how good this device would be at Bitcoin mining.

 

[Ericthegreat]

Interesting, but if I can't have a good gpu then I see no use....

 

[Qtis]

Do people understand that this project is more about an affordable dev platform than anything else? Just like the Raspberry Pi, it will not be the top of the notch in x86 gaming, but it'll be something else. Sure it could be used, but as many have said, it's ARM based. It's not as easy as it sounds. On the other hand, it could be used as a remote desktop mirroring device à la AppleTV + Airplay. Just like the Pi (I'll be setting it up for Airplay + remote backups).

Hopefully this becomes something. Faster than the Pi, but for a higher price

 

[Rydian]

but it'll be something else.

The question is... what?

 

[Issac]

I find this interesting, and would like to try it out to compute brown number pairs, digits of pi, fractals and other mathematical fun stuff (where high precision and calculation speed is wanted).

 

[Tom]

Why does it feel like half of these posts are recycled from this thread?

Get some new material, folks.

That aside, I'd be interested to see how good this device would be at Bitcoin mining.

that was sorta my plan

 

[Lanlan]

Interesting, but if I can't have a good gpu then I see no use....

Software emulation?

 

[Mantis41]

Hmmm, Portable password hacker anyone?

Reminds me of one of those movies. Agent plugs device into security panel and the code magically appears within a few seconds.

 

[Fishaman P]

GHz =/= performance
GHZ * #ofCores =/= "Total" GHz

IMO, having a dual-core base with 16/64 weak CPUs on the side won't help much. Any decent graphics card can beat that performance by a mile with GPGPU.

 

[Tom]

... This isn't for gaming genuises

 

[BORTZ]

I would have considered buying something like this a few years ago, but im not much for hobby computing any more.

 

[Gahars]

... This isn't for gaming genuis's

Oh, the irony...