EEVblog #934 - Raspberry Pi Supercomputer Cluster PART 1

[rob77]

How is the Ethernet to SPI being done?

Those Ethernet ships do everything - complete IP stack on a chip. You just give them a MAC address and tell them to start.

Is it gigabit ethernet? If not, than forget about any supercomputing and we should... SMELL BULLSHIT  instead of supercomputing
[youtube][/youtube]

Update: Yep it is    Orange Pi One – 10/100M Ethernet   

please read the whole thread...
and you're talking even bigger bullshit because gigabit ethernet doesn't provide remote DMA, therefore it's not suitable for computing node interconnect in a supercomputer.

[tszaboo]

Ok figured out this much, Application, Transport, Network layers are all in software. Then the Link layer is going to be SPI interface. The active components with the wires are the physical layer.
So the encapsulation is being routed in software to port over the SPI.
then the SPI to ethernet would be just a dummy converter.
Very interesting.

It actually does not matter. Newer linux kernel supports it out of the box, so you just need to recompile the kernel, and it will appear as a network card.

[rob77]

Ok figured out this much, Application, Transport, Network layers are all in software. Then the Link layer is going to be SPI interface. The active components with the wires are the physical layer.
So the encapsulation is being routed in software to port over the SPI.
then the SPI to ethernet would be just a dummy converter.
Very interesting.

It actually does not matter. Newer linux kernel supports it out of the box, so you just need to recompile the kernel, and it will appear as a network card.

agree, it doesn't matter... and in fact the SPI is replacing the PCI or USB bus... so it has nothing to do with link layer.. link layer will be still ethernet

[SeoulBigChris]

Too bad this Ethernet controller can't implement 10BASE2 (or at least I don't think it can, after only 10 minutes of study).