Building a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pis and Lego

Re:Building a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pis and Lego by K2h on Wednesday September 12, 2012 @03:08PM (#4512460)

I was trying to find a real comparison of MIPS of this thing compared to an I7 and landed on this page for performance data for the RPi. The most interesting thing to me is power consumption data at the bottom - that shows idle with network is around 370mA, which should mean (ignore power supply efficiencies) that 64 of these things should use about 120W at idle.

http://www.elinux.org/RPi_Performance

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Re:Building a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pis and Lego by jrabone on Wednesday September 12, 2012 @05:47PM (#4513424)

If those are switch-mode power supplies most of the that current will be drawn out of phase (ie. imaginary power); not important to the domestic customer, as the meter probably won't read it, but important to the supplier, who will come and make you fit power correction equipment to your supply :-)

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Re:Building a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pis and Lego by EwanToo on Wednesday September 12, 2012 @04:08PM (#4512868)

My beaglebone consumes about 1.7W so that sounds about right.

One interesting thing is that the USB port being activated (even idle) can blow any power consumption by the CPU itself out of the water.

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Re:Building a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pis and Lego by regularfry on Wednesday September 12, 2012 @03:47PM (#4512715)

How do you get 120W? I get 24W.

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Re:Building a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pis and Lego by synx508 on Wednesday September 12, 2012 @03:55PM (#4512769)

0.37amps X 5volts X 64

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Re:Building a supercomputer from 64 Raspberry Pis and Lego by regularfry on Wednesday September 12, 2012 @04:17PM (#4512935)

Oh, I'm an idiot. Misread it as 370mW.

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