GCHQ's Raspberry Pi 'Bramble' - exploring the future of computing
Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)
Posts: 1,720
GCHQ's Raspberry Pi 'Bramble' - exploring the future of computing
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/press_and_media/news_and_features/Pages/GCHQs-Raspberry-Pi-Bramble.aspx
First unveiled at the Big Bang Fair 2015, the Raspberry Pi Bramble is another example of GCHQs ability to combine innovation with education.
How the Bramble was born
As their winning entry into an internal invention competition intended to stimulate innovation, three GCHQ technologists chose to build a Raspberry Pi cluster computer, known as a Bramble.
Research indicated that existing similar projects tended to be one-off designs, with no commercial or reproducible hardware components, and generally set up to perform one specific task.
Design approach
The GCHQ design is for a commodity-based cluster, consisting of one or more blocks of Pis that can stand alone or be connected together to form a larger cluster. It is designed to be easy to build and service, with a software stack that allows multiple tasks to be run across the available processors using multiple technologies.
How the Bramble is formed
The basic block is made up of eight networked Raspberry Pis, which GCHQ has termed an OctaPi. This number was chosen taking into account power and cooling requirements, area, weight, accessibility, simplicity and aesthetics.
The boards are powered using the Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard to reduce the number of cables and power supplies needed, with each Pi also driving a large LED display, used to display the status of the system.
Each head node consists of:
1 Raspberry Pi model B
16 Gb SD Card
USB hub
Battery UPS powered
Downstream wired Ethernet to control the cluster
WiFi Client to connect to local network
WiFi Access Point for local admin devices
128Gb SSD for code/data repo
Real time clock
Touch screen LCD display
Camera (1 visible, 1 infra red)
The slave Raspberry Pis in the cluster consist of:
64 Raspberry Pi model Bs
32Gb RAM
1Tb Flash memory
1153 controllable LEDs
8 Gigabit Network PoE switches
ETC...
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/press_and_media/news_and_features/Pages/GCHQs-Raspberry-Pi-Bramble.aspx
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/press_and_media/news_and_features/Pages/GCHQs-Raspberry-Pi-Bramble.aspx
First unveiled at the Big Bang Fair 2015, the Raspberry Pi Bramble is another example of GCHQs ability to combine innovation with education.
How the Bramble was born
As their winning entry into an internal invention competition intended to stimulate innovation, three GCHQ technologists chose to build a Raspberry Pi cluster computer, known as a Bramble.
Research indicated that existing similar projects tended to be one-off designs, with no commercial or reproducible hardware components, and generally set up to perform one specific task.
Design approach
The GCHQ design is for a commodity-based cluster, consisting of one or more blocks of Pis that can stand alone or be connected together to form a larger cluster. It is designed to be easy to build and service, with a software stack that allows multiple tasks to be run across the available processors using multiple technologies.
How the Bramble is formed
The basic block is made up of eight networked Raspberry Pis, which GCHQ has termed an OctaPi. This number was chosen taking into account power and cooling requirements, area, weight, accessibility, simplicity and aesthetics.
The boards are powered using the Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard to reduce the number of cables and power supplies needed, with each Pi also driving a large LED display, used to display the status of the system.
Each head node consists of:
1 Raspberry Pi model B
16 Gb SD Card
USB hub
Battery UPS powered
Downstream wired Ethernet to control the cluster
WiFi Client to connect to local network
WiFi Access Point for local admin devices
128Gb SSD for code/data repo
Real time clock
Touch screen LCD display
Camera (1 visible, 1 infra red)
The slave Raspberry Pis in the cluster consist of:
64 Raspberry Pi model Bs
32Gb RAM
1Tb Flash memory
1153 controllable LEDs
8 Gigabit Network PoE switches
ETC...
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/press_and_media/news_and_features/Pages/GCHQs-Raspberry-Pi-Bramble.aspx