Turing Pi 2 Now Combines Raspberry Pi CM4s with NVIDIA Jetsons in a Single Cluster

Coming soon, up to four modules create a 16 core cluster with 32GB of RAM.

James Lewis
3 years ago β€’ Machine Learning & AI
Turing Pi 2 three-node cluster (πŸ“·: Turing Pi)

After about a year of additional development, Turing Pi is almost ready to release its latest cluster computing board known as Turing Pi 2. This cluster computing board can create clusters with up to 16 cores and 32GB of RAM while consuming only 80 watts!

"While working on the V2, we have been focused on bringing extensibility, modularity, and the possibility of upgrading clusters with new compute modules in the future. As a result, we believe that the Turing Pi V2 brings enormous capabilities to the edge computing space." β€” Turing Pi

Turing Pi 2 fits in a Mini-ITX sized printed circuit board with slot connectors in the center and a bevy of I/O ports on the front and back. By plugging modules into the "slots," Turing Pi 2 can combine a mixture of up to four Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 or NVIDIA Jetson boards in a single cluster.

Each board slot has a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet port to communicate between modules through a seven-port managed switch. That switch also contains two externally connected Gigabit Ethernet ports and a 100 Mbit port for cluster management.

The Turing Pi 2 offers the cluster:

  • Two SATA III ports
  • Two Mini-PCIe Gen 2 sockets
  • Four USB 3.0 ports, and
  • A single 40-pin Raspberry Pi-compatible GPIO connector

Turing Pi 2 has lost a few ports since the original announcement. The latest design removes fan connectors for each node, two of the three 40-pin GPIO connectors, and a 3.5-mm audio-out jack.

On the other hand, Turing Pi 2's new significant additions include the previously mentioned NVIDIA Jetson support, a system fan, and a board management controller (BMC).

The BMC adds a management plane to the cluster's existing control and data planes via a dedicated 100 Mbit network connection. Thus, it is possible to use the BMC with over-the-air (OTA) updates, remote management tools, and a LAN-based serial console to bootstrap a bare-metal cluster remotely!

What can you do with a cluster like these? Turing Pi says you can use them to learn about cluster applications, experiment with parallel computing, build a home server, or host a TensorFlow server β€” among other things. A Turing Pi 2 is not just for the home, either. It can also benefit developers testing or deploying cloud-native applications.

The company has not shared pricing or an exact launch date yet. However, if all goes well, a pre-order launch for Turing Pi 2 may occur as early as the fall of 2021, with estimated delivery in the first calendar quarter of 2022. For more information, visit the Turing Pi 2 update page.

James Lewis
Fan of making things that blink, fly, or beep. Host on element14 Presents, baldengineer.com, AddOhms, and KN6FGY.
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