Saiweb

Name and shame time!

Remember this blog here?

Well it seems our “friend” at ebay has had 458 negative feedback this month alone, infact just google fastmemoryman.

Ebay’s reply came back as they can basically do nothing … beware this seller and avoid at all costs.

So the 3g iPhone is out, and a _lot_ of 1st gen iPhone people are looking to grab this new phone as a replacement due to the new features, 3g, gps etc …

That leaves a _LOT_ of 1st gen iPhones that potentially are going to end up on your local dump (landfill) …

Further to the “Green Giant” beowulf cluster project, with the 1st gen iPhone having been cracked open for homebrew multiple times (Hackaday search for Iphone), why not try to re-cycle the 1st gen iPhones into this project as cluster nodes?

I am now looking at places like freecycle to see if I can get hold of any 1st gen’s to do development on … time will tell

But one of the features I have planned should I be able to get hold of a 1st gen or two is using the accelerometer to control the nodes online / offline status …

Anyway all concept and dreams unless one appears.

UPDATE: Please Digg This Entry, Stumble This Entry

For US readers £1616.25 @ £1:$1.9432 = $3140.697 total = $628.14 / node

Update based on my previous spec here

“Not draw more than a total 30w / GHZ under load (Bringing the 4 node total to just 120w)”

Based on the current _estimated_ 400w @ 48GHZ = 8.33w / GHZ (Well under target) …

We shall see what the actuall power consumption is once I find an alternate supplier.

Well lets start with the good news, the compact flash memory has arrived …

Now for the bad, following on from my last blog regarding this here the package arrived allright, but with all of £0.52 worth of royal mail postage, not recorded, not special delivery, no insurance, nothing £16 charge for £0.52 in postage … even with the packaging this no where near amounts to £16 worth of postage.

This is an utter JOKE, I am processing the photos for upload, the originals ar 5MP so a little to big for a blog

I have put in a complaint with ebay, citing this as using their postage system to “Extort” additional money.

Hopefully they will also see it this way, that does mean I can not “name and shame” at the moment, as it will not help my case.

Check back soon for the photos of the “£16″ postage and packing …

So while reading Hackaday today I came across a “render farm” project which has about the same power usage as a desktop (400w) the difference is this one has 24cpu’s and 48gb of ram.

Today I have managed to find a bargain, and have ordered 4 x 1GB compact flash cards to run the nodes. (£3.96) I’m just having to negotiate postage at the moment … as £4 per card is a bit excessive!

So provided I can get combined postage current project cost is at £7.96 … Now I need to find some pico / mini itx bargains.

So I am still looking for a viable PICO itx motherboard supplier … but the concept is rolling along nicely, so here’s a little more information.

The “project” is to make a beowulf cluster but as efficent and therefor green as possible, current “Pico” itx power suppliers advertise a 96% efficency … not bad

So why the pico form factor?

The reason I am going for this form factor is due to it’s size and power draw, because of the lower power draw of this form factor it allow for other (greener) power options to be explored.

1. Have at least 4ghz (4 nodes), distibuted processing power
2. Not draw more than a total 30w / GHZ under load (Bringing the 4 node total to just 120w)
3. Fit into a 2u rack chasis.

The lower the power consumption per GHZ the better, obviously, and if I can reduce the power consumption under load enough, this should allow for offsetting the running of the cluster using alternative energy sources.

Anway I have now created a category green giant and will continue to post more information as the concept progresses, I hope to get some technical diagrams up soon.

So I have a concept for a 24 node cluster, I want to build to run folding@home and other cancer research projects

The spec is to make it as “green” as possible, the lower the watts/ghz the better, whilst still maintinaing performance.

The downside is the pricing of pico-ITX at the moment, I’m getting quotes for about £200 / node … and that’s without ram, or storage …

What I need is the following.

pico-ITX form factor motherboard with ~1ghz CPU, in quantities of 5 or more

So please leave a comment or use the contact me form if you think you can help, or have any information on suppliers.