Dutch startup Sparklab Solutions is preparing to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Cerebro, a four-node cluster board designed for the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, Compute Module 5, and compatible computers-on-modules (COMs), as well as NVIDIA’s artificial intelligence (AI) focused Jetson family.
“Let’s be honest, most development boards are either too limited, too fragmented, or just not built with real-world AI [Artificial Intelligence] setups in mind,” Sparklab claims by way of background to its creation. “Cerebro was born from our own frustration with messy DIY builds and unreliable setups. We needed more power, cleaner control, and total flexibility: so we’re creating it.”
Cerebro itself, brought to our attention by Linux Gizmos, is a carrier board for up to four COM boards, designed for compatibility with COMs built to the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4/5 standard — meaning the CM4 and CM5 themselves along with Radxa’s CM5 and CM5 Lite boards, plus NVIDIA’s Jetson Nano, TX2 NX, Xavier NX, Orin NX, and Orin Nano modules, presumably through the use of compatible interposer boards to adapt the SODIMM format COMs to two high-density board-to-board connectors.
Elsewhere on the carrier are no fewer than 13 M.2 slots, providing “up to” three slots to any given node. There’s an on-board gigabit switch for inter-node communication with two RJ45 sockets for external communication, a USB 3.1 Gen. 2 and USB 2.0 multiplexer with dynamic port assignment, an HDMI port that can be routed to any given node, a single 40-pin Raspberry Pi-format general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header plus “lockable IO headers” that have five serial, give SPI, and five I2C buses, plus one GPIO. There’s an isolated CAN-FD controller, real-time clock, microSD Card slot, and even a nano-SIM slot for optional cellular connectivity.
Sparklab Solutions is planning to open a crowdfunding campaign for Cerebro on Kickstarter on April 30th, with 200 boards reserved for “Super Early Bird” backers; each of these will be priced at €429 (around $490), the company has confirmed, COMs not included.
