One side project I never seem to start is a single board cluster based on Octavo SoMs. The idea is to have 32 cores per board to mimic a Thinking Machines CM-1-like cube. How easy is it to use a PCB to route Ethernet between nodes? What kind of components would go between the SoM and the switch?
> That would be super cool! I'm not sure how it'd work together. I would think we need a higher speed fabric-type connection.
It wouldn't be a thorough emulation of a CM, just something that looks like one. More like a tool to play with clusters and MPI. Not sure there is an Octavo part (and the bundling of all passives in the module is important to simplify the design) with enough RAM to run Kubernetes (although Docker Swarm would probably run fine, but I've never thought about one with 32 nodes).
That said, the Octavo parts have 2 GbE ethernet ports, so we could have two independent networks on the board (which is nice, one for in-cluster management traffic, and other for the outside).
How does one learn about ethernet signalling and the cable interfaces (would we need those if using PCB traces?). What could be the passive components between a switch chip and a SoC on the same PCB? This is where my electronic design skills end.
