Raspberry Pi Powered Compute Blade Makes the Cut
Building Raspberry Pi clusters has never looked so good.
We've been tracking this project since mid 2021, and the time has been well spent. Ivan Kuleshov's Compute Blade is a thin PCB that packs a plethora of storage options for your Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (or compatible). Kuleshov's kickstarter has smashed its $522,209 funding goal, reaching $673,365 at the time of writing.
View Original
View Original
View Original
View Original
The Compute Blade is a rack-mountable carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, designed for high-density clusters. The PCB is packed with features, but your eye will be drawn to the red anodized aluminum heatsink which fits over the Compute Module 4 (or compatible), providing a passive means to keep the Pi cool. This could prove useful, should you wish to overclock.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Uptime Compute Blade Basic | Uptime Compute Blade TPM | Uptime Compute Blade Dev |
| Raspberry Pi CM4 Connector | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| M.2 (M Key up to 22110 NVMe drives) | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Gigabit Ethernet with PoE | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| UART | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Compute Blade Headers | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Stealth Mode | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| LEDs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| USB-A port | No | Yes | Yes |
| TPM | No | Yes | Yes |
| HDMI | No | No | Yes |
| USB-C (Bootloader update) | No | No | Yes |
| Micro SD card slot | No | No | Yes |
| Wi-Fi, BT, nRPIBOOT | Locked | Locked | Switchable |
The PCB measures 27 x 4 x 1.6 cm, and Kuleshov has optimized the board for many different features. Going from the Ethernet port on the left, we have Gigabit Ethernet supporting Power over Ethernet (PoE), on our dev unit there is an HDMI port. We then reach the anodized heatsink, secured using T7 hex screws. After that. there is a USB-A port, followed by an expansive M.2 slot. This slot supports NVMe drives from 2230 to 22110, or it can be used with other modules such as Google's Coral TPU.
If you need access to the GPIO, you have some GPIO pins at your disposal. We don't get the full 40 pins, which means we can't attach HATs, but we do have access to a small number of GPIO pins. If we need to connect sensors, then the I2C pins are exposed and can be used with components supporting the communication protocol, including Stemma QT components.
The Compute Blade's strength comes in numbers, more specifically "clusters". Given the small size and blade design of the units, they will easily slide into a blade server and as long as you've got plenty of Raspberry Pi's, you'll have a powerful Arm computing cluster.
With prices starting from $65 for a Compute Blade Basic, the version we have on the bench is the $107 Dev version, which has all the bells and whistles. If you like what you see, then head over to the kickstarter page to make your pledge. We'll be chatting live with Kuleshov on February 14 at 2pm ET / 7pm GMT on our weekly Raspberry Pi show, The Pi Cast.
Remember that crowdfunding a project is not a guarantee of receiving a finished product. Backing a crowdfunded project is akin to an investment; you believe in the project and want it to succeed. You are not purchasing a retail product.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Les Pounder is an associate editor at Tom's Hardware. He is a creative technologist and for seven years has created projects to educate and inspire minds both young and old. He has worked with the Raspberry Pi Foundation to write and deliver their teacher training program "Picademy".
-
Mr5oh So this has been popping up on many sites recently, and the thing that concerns me, is the Raspberry Pi. How long have these been unobtainable? This is a Kickstarter where you can order a product with one? That alone seems like a risk. Where are they going to get all these Pis to fullfill these orders?Reply -
TerryLaze Reply
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/uptimelab/compute-blade"The device is a rack-mountable, PoE-powered carrier board for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 and compatible devices with all the necessary interfaces. "Mr5oh said:So this has been popping up on many sites recently, and the thing that concerns me, is the Raspberry Pi. How long have these been unobtainable? This is a Kickstarter where you can order a product with one? That alone seems like a risk. Where are they going to get all these Pis to fullfill these orders?
"
Featuresfull Documentation preview here
Raspberry Pi CM4 support"
For the, not, including the.
It's only a carrier board. -
Mr5oh ReplyTerryLaze said:For the, not, including the.
It's only a carrier board.
There are tiers that include, and options to include the Pi. When you check out you can add it. Which is the issue. So they may need to source several hundred Raspberry Pi 4 8 GB models. Right now I can't source one, much less multiples. -
TerryLaze Reply
Does it actually go through on their site?!Mr5oh said:There are tiers that include, and options to include the Pi. When you check out you can add it. Which is the issue. So they may need to source several hundred Raspberry Pi 4 8 GB models. Right now I can't source one, much less multiples.
Or do they tell you that they will ship whenever they get some...