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Low-Cost Board Runs Linux, Google Apps
An anonymous reader writes to mention that hardware hacking enthusiasts can now get their hands on the guts of the Everex TC2502 Linux PC for just $60 (USD). The compact x86-compatible "gOS Dev Board" offers a lightweight Linux-based OS designed for use with Google Apps. " Along with a Firefox browser supporting the Google toolbar, gOS includes local productivity applications, such as OpenOffice.org. However, its main goal is "coherently packaging Google Apps to give users the idea that they can use Google as their main environment," explained Paul Kim, of Everex. "
Throw that bad boy in a nice case with some ram and a decent hard drive, and it's not a bad deal. You could probably put together a machine with maxed out ram, decent storage and a much more attractive case for the same amount if not less than you'd pay for the Walmart version. And while the processor isn't a powerhouse, I'm sure any distro could do allright on there. Gentoo might not be the best choice, but otherwise... (Just kidding there. While the gentoo crowds seem to have calmed - it really was a joke.)
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
"a lightweight...OS designed for use with [web apps]"
aka: Thin Client
Coming soon to a handset near you! Oh, wait...
What exactly is the BIG DEAL? I would still need to buy a disk drive ($50), some RAM ($30), a box/supply ($30), a monitor ($100), a keyboard and mouse ($20), and perhaps some speakers ($15) ... the motherboard and CPU are no longer the major expense in putting together a PC. Heck, newegg has the Celeron D315 (2.26GHz) for $38, and an MSI barebones system (box, 300W power supply, motherboard) for $70. Add in another $100 for HD/RAM/KB/Mouse an you have a pretty decent system for $208.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
From the article:
"..but with the lightweight Enlightenment window manager instead of heavy Gnome/KDE desktops. "
I never thought I would live to see the day.....
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This is just a motherboard, with a C7 processor already attached to it. No memory, no non-volatile storage...
According to TFA, it "comes with gOS", but gOS doesn't sit anywhere on this 'dev board', it has to be installed onto a regular hard drive just like a normal computer.
Bad article. It's not a dev board, it's an entirely normal mobo. The ONLY thing about it that is even remotely special is that there are linux drivers for all its components.
If it were a dev board I'd want at least some attached flash storage, and some interesting pin headers.
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The C7 processor is supposed to use a lot less power than a normal chip. From what they are saying, someone leaving a computer on a lot could expect to save 10.00 a month in electricity. IF that is true, it wouldn about pay for itself in 24 months (again, that assumes what they are saying is true).
I set one of the 299.00 Wal-Mart computers up for a local volunteer fire station that had an application that needed XP, but they could only find Vista computers new. I wiped the drive and installed a legal copy of XP Pro for them. I thought it was pretty darn snappy with a gig of RAM in it. In fact, I plan on getting one of the 199.00 ones with Linux installed on it.
Transporter_ii
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
So key things when building a beowulf cluster are performance per dollar and performance per watt. Hit sweet spots in those and you can adjust the rest through node count.
In this case, buying 4 of these boards would probably suck down more power than a single quad-core Intel planar+processor. The cost of 4 boards (plus memory, etc) would probably be not much cheaper than consolidating all of that into one chassis. So if expecting a significant lifetime out of it, it's not really worth it. You can put together similar budget systems for maybe 30% more money, but with probably 50-70% more performance and better performance per watt.
Now, if it offered say, 15% less performance per planar, but 25% less power consumption at 30% lower price, then yes, it may make sense to buy it and increase node count to offset the difference. But my understanding is that the difference in performance is quite drastic, more drastic than the cost savings or power consumption figures. I heard the VIA platform takes two clock cycles to execute a single-precision floating-point operation. For comparison, current Intel archictecture acheives 4 double-precision flops for every clock cycle (theoretical max). This is of key interest if wanting to compare your setup against the Top500.
Now if your intent is simply to learn the in and outs of clustering, with no practical work expected, and you lack old hardware to hobble together, it may be educational. However, it's likely that any old hardware lying around would be on the order of the same amount of educational value.
The target market is obviously areas where they won't need more than one, in which case scaling back power and cost at the expense of performance is a no-brainer. Other interesting places for VIA products ('just-enough' processing at a low TDP) are embedded. I've been wanting to piece together a Car-PC, but haven't overcome my laziness. A car-pc is an excellent target for VIA based products.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
VIA used to sell a 4-socket C3 motherboard. A local store still has a few.
And since each C3 would consume only about 4-7W (depends on model) that's a grand maximum of 28W, probably idling at around 4W. It was intented for servers, but I don't think it sold very well. Still, it was a great idea.
I kept checking the local walmarts for availability via the online inventory interface, and they were always out of stock. Checked SF, Chicago, NY, ... same deal. I wonder if there's been unexpectedly strong demand. The customer reviews on the walmart site look very positive. I finally ordered one via walmart's service where you can get it shipped to the store for free, and they'll you email when it arrives. This is for my young daughter to play flash games on, read wikipedia articles, etc. Not sure if I'll want to keep gOS or just install standard ubuntu. I guess I'll try installing gnome and seeing whether the performance is acceptable. The monitor and keyboard will probably end up costing more than the machine itself. I love the low power consumption, so I don't have to nag her to turn it off.
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How about this then?
http://www.directron.com/nf61sm7comb58.html
Biostar NF61S Micro 754 Motherboard and AMD Athlon 3100+ CPU with Cooler, $72.99
1 ATA + 2 SATA, plus nVidia GPU.
Apparently the only thing you need to peddle low-performing VIA-based crap these days is just to call it a "Dev Board". Hardware hack? What hardware hack? This is a basic run-off-the-mill PC motherboard. With a sloooowwww C7. If you're not hardware-modding your existing motherboards (via SMBus devices, or something else...) you are NOT MODIFYING THIS ONE EITHER.
"This is not a "low-cost board running Linux"... this is "a run-of-the-mill PC that can run Linux". And you're kidding yourself if you think that you cannot buy the same motherboard cheaper by going around these wily marketeers. What joke... and a slashvertisement. Buy Everex! Google in Everyone's Home!
Let's see what it DOESN'T have... This is like, seriously, 2004 tech here...
1) No gigabit.
2) Questionable AGP chipset
3) See 2 - No PCIe, given this is AGP.
4) VGA? At least not CGA...
5) Lots of legacy I/O ports no one cares about.
If you think you cannot by a BETTER motherboard for $60 is... well... I want some of whatever it is that you're smoking.
teh new hotness(tm) is mini-itx or even smaller.
I called the local walmart to see if they had that cheapie pc in stock. they didn't. I didn't want to wait and I wanted to see what all this low-power VIA stuff was about.
so I got a true mini-ITX system which is using the same c7 cpu: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2010/1890660635_273662e3c9_o.jpg
note, it DOES RUN HOT. I am not kidding. I bought it as a fanless system to run myth-tv back-end on. it does - and it captures 2 HD streams ok over 10/100 VIA ethernet. but the heatsink runs VERY hot to the touch. no way could I even use a cover on that system for more than 15 minutes before it overheats.
if you plan to use that c7 cpu in something 'real', you better have good cooling.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The cheapest way to play with a Beowulf cluster is to set one up a cluster of virtual machines, using Xen or VMware. I'm more familar with the VMware products, so I'll describe them. You don't want VMware Player, since it is optimized to provide good graphics for playing games and the like. Instead you want VMware Server, which only supports standard VGA but is optimized to run lots of VMs in the background. Both of these are free, btw. Once you have your hypervisor set up, install several identical single-core VMs. Try for twice as many VMs as you have real processor cores. You almost certainly want to do this on a 2-way or 4-way processor, to get plenty of multiprocessing. You don't want to set up multi-core VMs, because they tend to perform much worse than virtual single-cores. "Attach" everything to a virtual switch than isn't connected to the outside world. Now you can experiment with all sorts of Beowulf configurations. Only when you get something that you like (say, for ray tracing) should you consider translating it into real hardware.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
The ATX-style powersupply is a pain to add in.
I want an inexpensive board like this that takes a 12V supply, or
a PC hd connector like the FPGA boards out there from http://www.digilentinc.com/
It would be easier to put these in autos or stack them up for
robotics projects that way.
- Ralph
Does it run FreeBSD?
Probably not but you could likely port it. Or... Soekris" has a nice package that runs a variety of FOSS OSes and is very power friendly. A friend uses OpenBSD and has quite good success with it.