31 December 2016

New Years Eve 2016

My last post for 2016.

Its hot here in Sydney so everything is off apart from the Raspberry Pi's that don't seem to mind the hot weather. I need to find somewhere else to put the computers. Somewhere air conditioned.

To recap this year, the farm has grown a bit in size and therefore the compute capability. I have a lot of old hardware to sell off to make some room and fund future upgrades. The farm at the end of this year consists of:
2 x i7-5820k (6 core/12 thread) machines with a GTX1060 each
8 x i7-6700 (4 core/8 thread) machines
2 x i3-6100T with a GTX970 each
9 x Raspberry Pi3's

I am also looking at moving away from Windows due to on-going issues with windows update and Microsoft's insistence in maintaining my computers for me.  I will probably move the Intel GPU part of the farm across to Linux initially.

I also want to get the Alphaserver going. I have had it running before but got caught by the hobbyist license running out each year. I have renewed it twice. There is a move to port OpenVMS onto the x86 architecture that could offer another alternative to Windows.

Next years "to do" list:
1. Get air conditioned location for computers
2. Sell off old hardware
3. Move away from Windows
4. Probable multi-core CPU upgrades (Ryzen)
5. Probable networking upgrades
6. Get BOINC-MPI going
7. Get AlphaServer going
8. More GPU upgrades

As you can see quite a few things to get done next year. All the best for 2017.

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