Last year I spent a bit of time building a Kubernetes cluster with the original Turing Pi. It was fun, and interesting, but ultimately the performance of the Compute Module 3+ it was designed around led me to running my homelab off some newer Pi 4 model B computers, which are at least twice as fast for almost everything I run on them.
So this year, I was excited when the folks at Turing Pi sent me a Turing Pi 2 to test drive. And the board arrived just in time for Patrick Kennedy from ServeTheHome to challenge me to a cluster build-off at Supercomputing ’21! Check out his ARM cluster build here.
The Turing Pi 2 is a mini ITX motherboard capable of holding up to four Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4s or NVIDIA Jetson Nanos, and it integrates a board management backplane, power management, and gigabit Ethernet switch, alongside various PCI Express breakouts, so you can build a 4-node SBC cluster.
And it performs—as I hoped—much better than the older version. Not only do the CM4, Jetson Nano, and even pin-compatible replacements like Radxa’s CM3 and Pine64’s SOQuartz all have full gigabit Ethernet, their CPUs are noticeably faster than the CM3+ they replace.
The board I have is a prototype, and as such is still running a very early version of the firmware—RTC PWM fan control aren’t even implemented yet! But the folks at Turing Pi seem set on having all the features ironed out for a January 2022 launch. The board will cost about $200, with CM4 adapter cards (which connect a CM4 to the vertical SO-DIMM slot) adding on $10 each.
PCIe Expansion support
Since each CM4 has one PCI Express Gen 2 lane available, the board exposes each one in a different way.
For node 1 (at the top of the board), there’s a mini PCIe slot with a SIM tray underneath—useful for things like 4G or 5G modems. For node 2, there’s another mini PCIe slot (with no SIM tray).
Node 3 is connected to an ASMedia 2-port SATA controller, so you can plug in up to two SATA III drives directly into the Turing Pi 2, and they’ll be controlled by the computer in slot 3.
Node 4 is connected to a VL805 USB 3.0 controller, and that exposes a USB 3 front panel header and two USB 3.0 ports on the rear to the computer in slot 4.
Blinkenlights
Besides performance, one thing I didn’t like about the original board was how few status LEDs it had. This new board is much better in that regard, with status LEDs for almost every important feature.
Both of the Ethernet ports on the back have functional link and activity lights. Each slot also has appropriately-colored link and activity lights. Each slot also has a power indicator LED, plus there’s an overall board power LED, and an LED to indicate the MCU is ‘on’ (helpful when deciding to safely shut down the cluster).
And finally, each of the CM4 adapter cards has a green power and activity LED on the back, so you can visually confirm they’re powered on and doing something.
All in all, a good show of blinkenlights if I’ve ever seen one.
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