Raspberry Pi

[Firefox]

Actually, now that I think about it, the Raspberry Pi should be very similar in capability to a Power Mac G4 Cube. That's an interesting perspective and a half...

Being able to farm processes off to a bunch of cheap, low power computers dedicated to only doing one task (downloading, media server, media player) ensures that I can have that task available all day without having to worry about whether or not one will affect another.

Yeah, I'll definitely be doing that as well!

I like the idea that they can all have different operating systems on if need be, whatever is best for the job they're doing, and if something on one of them suddenly starts taking 100% CPU bandwidth none of the others will be pulled slow. And they'll all run cold and be completely *silent*.

[tufty]

I like the idea that they can all have different operating systems on if need be, whatever is best for the job they're doing, and if something on one of them suddenly starts taking 100% CPU bandwidth none of the others will be pulled slow. And they'll all run cold and be completely *silent*.

You'll probably have more power loss going on from the wall warts...

[Firefox]

Power them all off one supply. They only draw about 1W apiece at full chat.

[Firefox]

Slashdot Q&A answers are now up.
http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/11 ... -Questions

[disciple]

Power them all off one supply. They only draw about 1W apiece at full chat.

That's insane.

My 'low power' dual core atom server runs about 34 watts.

[toxibunny]

Not having a TV with HDMI, I have absolutely no use for this...







...so I'll only get two, then.

[tufty]

...so I'll only get two, then.

You'll probably be lucky to get one. Initial run of 10K, there's twice that many people on the mailing list already. I predict an instant slashdottage of their online shop when they roll it out.

[benedictw]

Not having a TV with HDMI, I have absolutely no use for this...

I believe it also does Composhite.

[Barney]

I'd be more than up for one of these inside a "mini-netbook" case - smaller than a Sammy NC10, say, but larger than my Pandora. That would be lovely

Edit: I'm actually working on an OS at the moment - basically stripped-down linux that boots directly to BASIC like a Spectrum did, but with more modern graphics and sound (and the obvious boost in processing speed) which would certainly rock in the above hardware...

[toxibunny]

Composhite, exactly.

First 2 weeks are going to be a 'buy one, donate one' thing, that should make things a bit easier for those really want one...

[Firefox]

Eee, when I were a lad we used to dream of composite...

Anyway, one interesting thing that's emerged on the forums is that the Broadcomm chip that powers the Raspberry Pi is actually a GPU!

It was designed as a GPU for phones that's supposed to be a companion to a separate CPU, but in the last few weeks before the design was frozen they managed to shoehorn an ARM core in there. So when the system boots it's actually the GPU that boots first, and then that powers up the ARM core to boot the operating system.

This explains why such an inexpensive chip can do 1080p video and play Quake III.

[teamonkey]

Actually, now that I think about it, the Raspberry Pi should be very similar in capability to a Power Mac G4 Cube. That's an interesting perspective and a half...

[Firefox]

On Newsnight yesterday there was a piece on how the UK education system doesn't produce decent programmers anymore, with the heads of Eidos and Google lamenting this on camera. David Braben is there showing off the Raspberry Pi running Scratch, too.

Here's a slightly abbreviated version: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/n ... 612063.stm

I don't think I can link to the full version on iPlayer (because the URL appears to contain a session ID), but if you do watch it there it starts at 30 minutes in.

(edit) Some kind soul has uploaded it to Youtube.



Meanwhile, the logo competition has been won:

Hmmm... a bit Dalek-like for my taste, but there's some cleverness in it to do with it being a Buckyball with 32 faces symbolising the 32 bits of the ARM core.

Actually, now that I think about it, the Raspberry Pi should be very similar in capability to a Power Mac G4 Cube. That's an interesting perspective and a half...

About that, I think. That's for a stock Cube as originally shipped; obviously you can expand a Cube's RAM up to 1.5GB and swap out the graphics card, which you can't do on a Pi.

The reason I thought of the Cube was because I nearly bought one earlier in the year because I really miss convection-cooled computing. But then I looked at the specs and decided that a nice fanless ARM board would be just as good (this was before the Pi was announced, mind you).

[zbandito]

You could fit a half dozen in a netbook case with a little hardware KVM switcher to change which one you are actively addressing/viewing, and it could still run on batteries.

[adam]

that sounds ridiculous... would love something like that for blender