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I regret building this $3000 Pi AI cluster

(www.jeffgeerling.com)
468 points speckx | 5 comments | 19 Sep 25 14:28 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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densh ◴[19 Sep 25 18:08 UTC] No.45304632[source]▶
For anyone interested in playing with distributed systems, I'd really recommend getting a single machine with latest 16-core CPU from AMD and just running 8 virtual machines on it. 8 virtual machines, with 4 hyper threads pinned per machine, and 1/8 of total RAM per machine. Create a network between them virtually within your virtualization software of choice (such as Proxmox).

And suddenly you can start playing with distributed software, even though it's running on a single machine. For resiliency tests you can unplug one machine at a time with a single click. It will annihilate a Pi cluster in Perf/W as well, and you don't have to assemble a complex web of components to make it work. Just a single CPU, motherboard, m.2 SSD, and two sticks of RAM.

Naturally, using a high core count machine without virtualization will get you best overall Perf/W in most benchmarks. What's also important but often not highlighted in benchmarks in Idle W if you'd like to keep your cluster running, and only use it occasionally.

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globular-toast ◴[19 Sep 25 19:30 UTC] No.45305468[source]▶
I've been saying this for years. When the last Raspberry Pi shortage happened people were scrambling to get them for building these toy clusters and it's such a shame. The Pi was made for paedogogy but I feel like most of them are wasted.

I run a K8s "cluster" on a single xcp-ng instance, but you don't even really have to go that far. Docker Machine could easily spin up docker hosts with a single command, but I see that project is dead now. Docker Swarm I think still lets you scale up/down services, no hypervisor required.

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1. motorest ◴[20 Sep 25 04:23 UTC] No.45310344[source]▶
> I've been saying this for years. When the last Raspberry Pi shortage happened people were scrambling to get them for building these toy clusters and it's such a shame. The Pi was made for paedogogy but I feel like most of them are wasted.

You're describing people using RPis to learn distributed systems, and you conclude that these RPis are wasted because RPis were made for paedogogy?

> I run a K8s "cluster" on a single xcp-ng instance, but you don't even really have to go that far.

That's perfectly fine. You do what works for you, just like everyone else. How would you handle someone else accusing your computer resourcss of being wasted?

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2. 0xDE7EC71V3 ◴[20 Sep 25 05:13 UTC] No.45310589[source]▶
I’ve learned so much setting up a pi cluster. There is something so cool about seeing code run across different pieces of hardware.
3. globular-toast ◴[20 Sep 25 07:27 UTC] No.45311261[source]▶
The point was you don't need to wait for 8 Pis to become available when most people can get going straight away with what they already have.

If you want to learn physical networking or really need to "see" things happening on physically separate machines just get a free old PC from gumtree or something.

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4. motorest ◴[20 Sep 25 15:44 UTC] No.45314328[source]▶
> The point was you don't need to wait for 8 Pis to become available when most people can get going straight away with what they already have.

You also don't need RPis to learn anything about programming, networking, electronics, etc.

But people do it anyways.

I really don't see what point anyone thinks they are making regarding pedogogy. RPis are synonymous with tinkering, regardless of how you cut it. Distributed systems too.

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5. globular-toast ◴[22 Sep 25 21:31 UTC] No.45339746{3}[source]▶
I think you misread my comment, maybe it's clearer if I say "(admittedly) the pi is meant for paedogogy (however) I feel like most of them are wasted".