
Tiny Titan - jonbaer
http://tinytitan.github.io/
======
jpiburn
Probably not clear from the pictures, but the Tiny Titan sits on the
observation deck directly in front of the actual Titan supercomputer at ORNL.
It's used as a hands on demonstration when tours are being given about how
supercomputers work.

A useful tool for explaining the basic concepts in a tangible way.

~~~
mcguire
Now, that is cool.

Tours of a computing facility are otherwise pretty useless.

~~~
ndesaulniers
You don't appreciate the sheer scale of hardware? The blinking LEDs alone are
a spectacle.

~~~
mcguire
At one point I noticed a dearth of blinking lights in our (CS dept) machine
room and suggested we get some plywood, spray paint, and a bunch of LEDs so
that anyone peering through the door wouldn't see a big room full of what
looked like shelving and cable octopi.

~~~
benbenolson
You clearly haven't been to ORNL. Definitely go on a tour sometime, it's well
worth it.

~~~
cwal37
Also fun, 1-2 times a year the Spallation Neutron Source[1] is shut down and
the tunnels are open for tours. Was happy to have had the opportunity to check
that out when I was working there, although I think my favorite high-science
tour is still the National Ignition Facility[2]. Going inside of that places
was awesome. Thinking back now, LLNL had a number of great tours actually,
HEAF[3] was pretty cool as well.

As far as I know none of those are open to the general public though; you have
to work there. Someone I was dating at the time went on the public's tour of
NIF, which really only involved them standing in the lobby. Ironically, she
was a nuclear physicist and I do environmental and energy economics-y things,
so I was completely unqualified to know anything about what I was seeing and
she didn't even get a physicist as her tour guide.

[1] [https://neutrons.ornl.gov/sns](https://neutrons.ornl.gov/sns)

[2] [https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/what-is-
nif](https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/what-is-nif)

[3]
[https://wci.llnl.gov/facilities/heaf](https://wci.llnl.gov/facilities/heaf)

------
gebeeson
Wow. That is a great post - I have a voracious 12 yo grandson who is now all
about computing, math and 'being a developer/engineer'. He asked last night if
I had any cool projects that we could do. Yes. Yes I do. Thanks for this post!

~~~
dang
A grandfather like you and projects like that would have been a dream come
true for me at 12. I bet many people here would say the same.

If he hasn't seen it yet, the "Nand to Tetris" course/book would be a perfect
thing to work through together.

------
rbanffy
I'm thinking about building one, but with Pi Zero's and USB networking. The
ClusterHAT guy wrote software to netboot the nodes off a cluster controller's
SD through the USB network. With that, you don't even need an SDcard for each
node.

I was thinking about also adding a LED bar with one LED for each GPU SIMD
element, refreshing a couple times per second and lighting up for the units
used above a certain threshold. The ARMv6 SIMD instructions don't look that
encouraging.

The end result would be something that looks like a small Connection Machine.

~~~
thinkMOAR
"With that, you don't even need an SDcard for each node."

neat stuff, i didn't know that, going to read up.

~~~
rbanffy
I imagine that, if it doesn't already do that, it'd be easy to make all nodes
share a read-only file system for system and programs and have node-specific
/etc, /var, and /home

------
brudgers
Hard for me to find, but the instructions for building are,
[https://tinytitan.github.io/downloads/TinyTitanBuildGuide.pd...](https://tinytitan.github.io/downloads/TinyTitanBuildGuide.pdf)

------
harwoodr
It would be interesting to see if this can be extended to use a raspberry pi
GPU library, like QPULib or the like.

[https://github.com/mn416/QPULib](https://github.com/mn416/QPULib)

------
jtbigwoo
As someone who about programming and electronics, but knows very little about
parallel computing, is this a good place to start? Does anybody have other
resources or projects to recommend?

~~~
ksk
[https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/parallel_comp/](https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/parallel_comp/)

------
amelius
Why not just simulate the computer on a single desktop PC using a bunch of
virtual machines?

It's less costly, and all of the concepts are the same (except for connecting
them using cables, but that's only a plus if you like the physical experience
over abstraction, in which case perhaps computing is not really your thing to
start with).

~~~
vinceguidry
The answer is right there at the top of the article: that it's for the
classroom.

~~~
amelius
Yes, so what will the target-audience learn over the virtual experience? Other
than that they can't run this at home because of the cost?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Their home computers probably don't run Linux, for one. They also don't have
to worry about syncronization over the network, and they don't have much
opportunity to learn about hardware and maker skills.

I think you initially misunderstood this to be a consumer-oriented project
instead of a classroom-oriented project, but doubled down when you were
corrected.

~~~
zeveb
> Their home computers probably don't run Linux, for one.

Glib reply: why not?

Serious reply: VirtualBox is available for Windows, macOS & Linux alike, and
is free. Surely that's acceptable?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Glib response: because Windows is the dominant OS and my statement is
statistically likely

Serious response: I'm of the opinion that you don't learn much about Linux by
using it in VirtualBox.

~~~
zeveb
I meant running multiple VMs in VirtualBox to simulate a distributed system as
an alternative to buying multiple Raspberry Pis, not running Linux in
VirtualBox.

The really cool thing, though, about multiple Raspberry Pis is that the
systems _really are_ running in parallel, rather than faking it with
multitasking. That's definitely worth something in an educational context.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Ah, I see what you mean. That makes more sense.

Still, I think there's value in having this cool looking machine to fiddle
with over the computer they're used to messing with all the time. I think it
likely to engage more.

~~~
amelius
> I think it likely to engage more.

As opposed to running it _by yourself_ on your own computer in a bunch of
virtual machines?

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Absolutely. Do you see no value in the maker skills involved in building the
rig?

------
mciancia
Well, at least they do wrote some code for simulations using MPI which is nice
I saw a few cases of "Hey, lets spend XXX USD for cluster of <RPI/something
else>" and after that "Well we can't actually code anything for that so leave
it rot/run BOINC to make it useful for anything at all"

------
ageofwant
Check out the bitscope blade
[http://au.element14.com/b/bitscope](http://au.element14.com/b/bitscope) for
another take on this. You still need most of the peripherals, but it makes for
a slightly neater setup.

~~~
c12
Thanks for sharing this, looks interesting.

------
Damogran6
I'm just dipping my foot in the pool and building a cluster with a Pi 3B as
the leader and 3+ Pi Zero W's. (Three now, expecting to pad it as a lesson.)

Am I shooting myself in the foot by using the Wifi ethernet to handle inter-
device communication?

------
rcarmo
This is still using original Series Bs... which are essentially obsolete by
now. I stopped using them around 2 years ago:

[https://github.com/rcarmo/raspi-cluster](https://github.com/rcarmo/raspi-
cluster)

Using Pi 3 boards would quadruple the number of cores and yield a 600%
increase in thanks to the slightly faster default clock rate...

~~~
PhasmaFelis
They're not actually trying to build a high-powered computing cluster, just
demonstrate how one works.

~~~
rcarmo
Neither of them is really high-powered, believe me. :)

But using one with old B boards could be excruciatingly slow at times, which
is why I just had to upgrade mine - it’s since become a lot more productive in
the sense that my tests take around 5 minutes instead of a whole hour :)

~~~
weego
I doubt you're the only one on here with the understanding that a bunch of
Pi's is not really a supercomputer cluster, but thanks for the clarification
smileyface.

------
hulkisdumb
wonder what ever happened to parallela? sounds like the same thing

------
kkotak
Yeah, but can I mine Bitcoins with it?

------
holtalanm
this looks like it would b a fun project to do with my son.

------
growtofill
More descriptive title, e.g. ‘Tiny Titan, a $1,000 classroom supercomputer’
would be helpful.

~~~
gtm1260
How does this cost $1,000? The budget is clearly not being used efficiently.
The only computing part, the 9 RPi's are 315$ all together. So what, 685$ of
plastic and accessories. Hmm....

~~~
adrianN
30 bucks per USB LED Light, 15 bucks per USB cable... they don't choose cheap
components.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Yeah they could save a bunch on those; the USB LEDs are things they could make
themselves, stick them into the gpio pins. Actually they don't need those.

If your parts are more expensive than the rPI itself, you're not going to need
it. Those cases aren't cheap either.

~~~
jtbigwoo
I help to run a once-a-week STEAM program for kids. Here's what we've found
about cheap tools.

\+ When they are new to a program, kids and parents care about how tools look.
We have a nicely organized wall of tools and six identical work tables. It
helps get participants excited and helps convince parents that the program is
legitimate.

\+ Once they buy in, kids don't care about how a tool or project looks. Some
of our most popular projects are built from scrap wood or cardboard.

\+ Even after they buy in, kids get easily frustrated when a tool doesn't
work.

I think it makes perfect sense for the Titan team (or anyone without a pre-
existing relationship to a group) to make everything nice-looking since it
helps to establish credibility. If you're making something at home or you've
already established credibility, you could absolutely cut some corners by
using cheaper parts or making parts yourself. Make sure to use quality parts,
though. If you rig something that constantly requires little fixes or nudges
to stay running, your audience is going to quickly lose interest.

------
qualitytime
> Curriculum > Comming soon!

Seriously...?

~~~
jlgaddis
Yes, seriously. Someone on the Internet made a typo.

It happens. Based on your surprise, it likely happens a lot more than you
think.

------
stormbeard
Why not just use virtual machines to sub out the RPis? Without the curriculum,
it's not clear what they're trying to teach here. Assembly? Networking?
Administration of the RPis?

~~~
make3
the fact that it looks really cool likely has surprisingly strong effects on
student motivation and work/attention levels, leading to more learning, which
is the sole target here

~~~
wimagguc
Who are the students though? I'd assume that parallel computing is mostly
interesting for university-grade "aspiring scientists", which is reinforced by
the example software (a parallel 2D Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics(SPH) code
and a parallel Mandelbrot set race).

Do we assume that 18+ folks are only interested in parallel programming if
it's assembled of shiny pipes?

~~~
accatyyc
Doesn’t seem like anyone assumes that. I’m interested in this stuff, but
having it visual and physical like that would spark my interest even more.
Seems like a no brainer that it makes students learn without studying a text
book

