Return to the archive index

forwarded message from Eugene Leitl

--tntMErF2u9
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

I'm not up to date with wear-hard, have we discussed Corel's new box
already? The form factor, PCI compatibility, power drain, Linux OS
and especially the computing crunch are interesting -- see below
forward. 
http://www.corelcomputer.com

--tntMErF2u9
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Return-Path: <>
Received: from mail.planetx.com ([205.229.132.83])
	by liposome.genebee.msu.su (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id MAA09412
	for <>; Sun, 31 May 1998 12:43:06 +0400
Received: (from )
	by mail.planetx.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) id EAA29424
	for transhumantech-list; Sun, 31 May 1998 04:44:18 -0400
Received: from liposome.genebee.msu.su ( [158.250.34.92])
	by mail.planetx.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id EAA29421
	for <>; Sun, 31 May 1998 04:44:09 -0400
Received: (from )
	by liposome.genebee.msu.su (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA09387;
	Sun, 31 May 1998 12:41:09 +0400
X-Mailer: VM 6.43 under 20.4 "Emerald" XEmacs  Lucid
Message-ID: <>
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: 
From: Eugene Leitl <>
Sender: 
To: 
Subject: tech: BEO:COREL:LINUX:forwarded message from Donald Becker
Date: Sun, 31 May 1998 12:41:08 +0400 (MSD)

Return-Path: <>
Received: from cesdis (new.gsfc.nasa.gov [128.183.38.51])
	by liposome.genebee.msu.su (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA09102
	for <>; Sun, 31 May 1998 12:32:54 +0400
Received: by cesdis (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA12892; Sun, 31 May 98 03:37:50 EDT
Received: from beowulf.gsfc.nasa.gov by cesdis (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA12885; Sun, 31 May 98 03:37:37 EDT
Received: by beowulf.gsfc.nasa.gov (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA06661; Sun, 31 May 98 03:47:26 EDT
X-Sender: 
In-Reply-To: <>
Message-Id: <>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Precedence: bulk
From: Donald Becker <>
Sender: 
To: Kragen <>
Cc: Brian C Merrell <>, 
Subject: Re: Corel computer and beowulf
Date: Sun, 31 May 1998 03:47:26 -0400 (EDT)

On Sat, 30 May 1998, Kragen wrote:

> On Fri, 29 May 1998, Brian C Merrell wrote:
> > I don't know how many of you are at the Expo right now, but the Corel
> > ARM-based machine is the neatest thing I've ever seen.  they're about an
> > inch and a half high and a foot wide.  It would be interesting to have a
> > beowulf running off of a single PC power supply and the entire setup
> > fitting in a closet.  What do you think?
> 
> Alleluia!  The promised day is come!
> 
> Can one install one's own Linux kernel on them?  How about 100Mbps Ethernet?

Thanks to Robert Hart of RedHat we had a very nice meeting with the top
Corel designers.  Here are a few things we learned.

  The boards can "run off of a 9V battery" if there is no disk attached.
  That's about 8W, so you might put 8 on a single PC power supply with a 7W
  spin-up, 4W running disk. The boards are physically tiny and trivial to
  cool, so this is huge form-factor advantage!

  No hardware floating point support, but the software FP speed isn't too
  bad.  This rules out FP-intensive work, but for everything else the 250
  MIPS (!) puts it in the running.

  Two ethernet interfaces, a NE2000 10mbps port for USB-like things (don't
  use it) and a good Tulip-21143 10/100 port.

  A single bus-master IDE interface now, with a SCSI possible someday.
  (Most chips runs at 3.3V, so I'm guessing they will select a SCSI chip for
  low power while still having high performance.)

  It's electrically a full PCI bus, but the physical form factor doesn't
  meet specs.  Don't count on plugging in a board.

  There was a mention of possibly producing a cluster version with the
  modem/video/etc chips not populated, if there was a demand.

  I don't expect that getting the ARM kernel code will be a problem.  It
  will likely be put in the distributed development kernel Real Soon Now.

Donald Becker					  
USRA-CESDIS, Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences.
Code 930.5, Goddard Space Flight Center,  Greenbelt, MD.  20771
301-286-0882	     http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/people/becker/whoiam.html

Send unsubscribe requests to: 
Archive located at: http://www.excelsior.org/transhuman_tech_list/

--tntMErF2u9--

From Wear-Hard Mailing list Archive (WH)
Maintained by R. Paul McCarty

Archive created with babymail