Marks Rpi Cluster passes 20M for Einstein

Here is the certificate for Marks Rpi Cluster passing 20M credits for the Einstein@home project. The cluster is currently idling due to the heat, but as things cool off overnight it will get it going again.

Last week saw the Einstein@home download server not giving out any work due to filling the file system. At one point Marks Rpi Cluster had over 150 file transfers stuck while downloading. The project advised to abort them so the cluster was idle for a couple of days due to lack of work. Running a BOINC project requires constant maintenance and problems happen from time to time. I think the project staff do a great job of dealing with issues as they arise.

13th of November

Marks Rpi Cluster is still running. I have the cluster idle during the day and when it cools off overnight get them all going. We're still concentrating on Einstein@home. Needless to say its going to take longer to reach the 20M milestone. We're currently on 19.8M credits for Einstein.

This week saw another kernel and bootloader update so that lead to a round of updating and rebooting all the Pis. This was made a bit easier as the cluster is idle during the day so I don't need them to finish their current work.


Rock 5B
As mentioned in my previous post I had a look at the Radxa Rock 5B. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any Australian distributor for them so I would have to get it from an overseas site, which I have done in the past. Power supplies (ie with an Australian plug/240 volts) and warranty can be an issue when buying any computer parts from overseas.

I have only seen two cases mentioned for them, one aluminium and one plastic (3D print available on Thingiverse). There are no cluster case designs for them.

In regard to finding an operating system for it the Radxa website mentions Debian 10 (Buster) which was released in July 2019. Debian are currently on version 11 (Bullseye). I think this may be the Radxa website being out of date because I've seen a YouTube video showing it running Bullseye as well as the AmeriDroid website mentioning a few things not working under Bullseye as of July 2022. In addition to running Android or Debian there is also Armbian available for a range of SBC (Single Board Computers) including the Rock 5.

5th of November

Marks Rpi Cluster continues to run 24/7. After my last post we had a few hot days so I allowed the cluster to finished off its current work and idle. It now back to crunching again although today was hot as well with the room they are in reaching 30 degrees C.

With the break in crunching for a few days my RAC (Recent average credit) has dropped from from 40k to 29k. The cluster is up to 19.7M credits so at the current rate it might take 3 days to hit 20M credits, assuming I don't stop again due to the heat.

Seeing as I can't get a hold of any more Raspberry Pis I have been looking at the Raxda Rock 5B online. It is an ARM single board computer, almost double the size of the Rpi and comes in a Pico-ITX format. It has 4 Cortex A55 cores, 4 Cortex A76 cores, a Mali G610 GPU and ton of connectivity. Given its combination of cores its probably best to crunch on the A76 cores and leave the A55 cores to run less demanding work. They come in 4, 8 and 16GB memory sizes. Unfortunately it doesn't have the software support that the Pi has so a number of things don't work under Debian. It can also run Android.