Parallella Kickstarter. A year too late

Here is a Kickstarter projected that I help funded more than a year ago. ETA delivery was May 2013. I finally get this April 2014.

This is suppose to be a super-charged Raspberry PI. It is billed as a "A Supercomputer For Everyone."
It comes in 16 and 64 core configuration. The 16 core hits 13 GHz and 26 gigaflops performance. It is a dual core ARM A9 SoC with either a 16 or 64 core "co-processor" RISC chips. You can also cluster these little babies. I was going to build a little Debian/Ubuntu mini box with this. However, for now, I think I rather go with an INTEL NUC.

I'm pretty much glad I didn't lose my money on this but I've lost my enthusiasm. For the time being, this is going ino the drawer. After being stood up for close to a year, you can see why I'm not so enthusiastic any more.




Links:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/99-raspberry-pi-sized-supercomputer-touted-in-kickstarter-project/

Six months with the Samsung Chromebook

It has been close to six months since I got my Samsung Exynos (ARM) powered Chromebook.
I've been using quite a bit lately and have some time to reflect on using it.

The same criticism I had in the beginning still hold true. The device is still very limited in what you can do with it. However, it's strengths are the reason I still use it.

USB dongle for Samsung Chromebook

I can confirm the Apple USB 2.0 10/100 Ethernet dongle works fine with the ARM base Samsung Chromebook. It is a plug-n-play affair. Unfortunately, my gigabit ASIX dongles don't work yet.
So if you want a wired connection, you know where to start.

Samsung Chromebook notebook review

Despite my misgivings, I broke down and got myself a Samsung Chromebook. Pictured above and stacked on top of my 15" Macbook Retina Pro, the Chromebook is tiny!

It is a basically a web browser using the internals of a mobile tablet in an 11" netbook form factor. I got it because I wanted to see if I could be cloud-only. Short answer, "hell no."  However, the free 100GB of cloud storage for two years pretty much pays for the device. I also wanted to play with ARM running a polished desktop OS (yes, I consider Chrome OS a real OS albeit different). And lastly, it makes a good computer for the guest room.

Read my end user review for my impressions on this device.

Waiting for Chromebook refresh

Rumor has it that there will be a new, updated quad-core Exynos Samsung Chromebook announced at Google I/O in the next few weeks.

I've been really tempted to get the current one for tinkering. Why? Why not. I am not interesting in cheap x86 netbooks you can get for the same price. Sure, a few of you can point to some nice 11.6 ASUS touchscreen ones for a few bucks more. Moreover, I already have enough laptops lying around. What interests me is the ARM architecture; running anything but INTEL. I really just want a super light-weight, portable, long battery device to do some MySQL work locally. I'm currently using an iPad w/ keyboard SSH remotely. It works but I prefer to run something locally.

I don't know if I could deal with just Chrome OS. I've been playing with it under VM and I can't see myself using it full time even with developer mode and cruoton. I've also been paying attention to the latest Linux kernel support and running Linux on those books in general. Things are progressing to a point where full-time ARM linux desktop is viable.

Lets see! I may pop for one in the next few weeks. If the new one is compelling, I may get it. If not, I', heading over Best Buy to get the current one open-box at discount. They get a high return rate so there are plenty of open-box returns at great prices.

Stocking up on PogoPlugs

I've been stocking up on these little PogoPlug devices. I have 5 total (3 at work and 2 at home).

$18.50 shipped on sale at Adorama is a no-brainer. I've installed ArchLinux and they've been running all sorts of things for me - BIND DNS, MySQL backups, Rsync Daemon, LAMP (PHP and MySQL). They are great fun to play with. I make a point to do everything from my phone and iPad to make sure I am "Intel/X86" free. I definitely think ARM is the future. I have a bunch of old USB sticks lying around so these put them to great use.

With an iPad, it takes a total of 20 minutes from start to finish to build a LAMP server with SAMBA/AFP access. Once you enabled SSH, you are pretty much free to do whatever you want with ArchLinux ARM. Go ahead, install WordPress and host a blog from your house for less than $2 a month in electricity.

Link: http://archlinuxarm.org/