parallela based laptop

[dacian]

Hi all,
I would like to make a parallela based laptop but I have little to no hardware design experience. I see it as several parallela boards working together as massive parallela computer which is just sipping energy depending on the needs.
I'm tired of these monsters that need special cooling because you have one massive processor that consumes tons of watts for nothing.
I'm ok with embedded systems so the software I can handle but the hardware it is too much for me.
Like for example how you would design the hardware so that one can access more then 4GB of RAM since the CPU is designed for 32bit addressing as far as I read?
Would be interested anyone to help me in this project or at least give me some directions if this would be possible or not?
best regards,
dacian

[CIB]

Don't have an answer to your question, but instead of multiple parallelas, you might want to throw an RPi in there for the GPU.

Actually, regarding GPUs, is it possible to connect a dedicated GPU to the parallela? I've read about GPUs that can be attached externally to laptops, maybe the same method would work for the parallela to use the parallela as "motherboard" inside a computer..

[dacian]

thank you but that is what I want to avoid.
I think the chip from Adapteva has enough power it just needs to be programmed properly.
And the more standard and homogenous components you have in a computer the easier is to manage them.
Plus as I said I want low power so no big cpu-s gpu-s or other big processing units in the design.

[9600]

@dacian I'd probably take an enclosure similar to the and fit it with an 8-port gigabit Ethernet PCB assembly as many boards as possible, leaving room for a battery and, if required, storage. You can't add RAM modules to Parallella and so you need to work with available memory, and presumably if you are using multiple boards you will be figuring out some way to distribute your workload anyway.

@CIB I think those external laptop GPUs use a CardBus to PCI expander. I couldn't say for certain, but I'd imagine that it may be possible to attach a GPU via the PEC_FPGA expansion and it's mostly a matter of work required. It has also been suggested that some accelerated graphics capabilities could be implemented in the FPGA.

Cheers,

Andrew

[dacian]

@Andrew:
1: is it not possible to use the GPIO port on the board to communicate to other boards? I consider ethernet too slow for communication.
divide them in four connectors north south west east direction. Maybe have some extra routing logic that could scale the 48 GPIO-s depending on needs to the four directions.
Maybe even the DSP ports could be used but that for later.
2: Ignoring the big issue of distributing the workload, I understand that what I'm saying next needs a different pcb layout but would it be possible to design a simplified version of parallela board that does not have any connectors except the 4 GPIO ones mentioned above? like this lets say you have a version of PCB able to connect to 3 simplified boards on the side of the laptop and the simplified version mentioned before in the inner side of the laptop board. would this be possible?

[9600]

[dacian]

@Andrew
thank you for the reply. I really appreciate it.
So your suggestion, if I understand correctly, would be to prove the concept first using just the 2 connectors from the DSP and if the software is ready and can scale move to the next step and design the hardware extensions described at 2.
OK. I'll try that first.

[9600]

[dacian]

@Andrew
one more question and I'm done.
Where can I get/buy cables that can connect the ones exposed by the DSP?

[9600]

Adapteva plan to offer cables but these are not available just yet.

Cheers,

Andrew