The popular and well-liked Raspberry is often the basis for unusual projects. They can be small constructions, but also huge as presented by Oracle. The company built a supercomputer with a combination of up to 1060 Raspberry Pi units.
Raspberry Pi 3 B + as a supercomputer
Specifically, this is the Raspberry Pi 3B + model. Oracle technicians combined them with several pieces of Ubiquiti UniFi Switch (so Raspberries communicated over Ethernet) and supplied electricity from many USB power supplies. The whole got along with the Supermicro 1 Xeon server, which managed the cluster's memory. In terms of housing, many of its components were made thanks to 3D printers.
The presentation of the device took place at the Oracle OpenWorld conference. It was also revealed that the project was based on the Oracle Autonomous Linux operating system and was created because simply "a large cluster is cool."
Oracle shows off a 1060 node Raspberry Pi Supercomputer at Oracle Open World. Check it out! https://t.co/Eux8cEHBQf
– STH
Oracle must be full of enthusiasts
Such a supercomputer is even a name for exaggeration, because one high-class professional AMD or Intel processor is so much more powerful than Raspberry that even more than 1000 such computers will not be faster than the hardware resources of traditional server rooms (and yet we rather don't have one in each) old computer).
This is a very interesting project. It may not be practical in a direct understanding, but if the company's research department wants to have fun and thus gain experience necessary for other purposes, why not. And so the company spends its money. It's a bit like home DIY IT projects (which do not always have to be profitable, but are simply intriguing), but it is made by Oracle, not a private enthusiast.