Raspberry PI 2
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There has now been a new version of the Pi released. I was going to get one as they are still dead cheap. I might run some rumble on it and see how it does. It apparently has a newer quad core CPU that runs at 900mhz and due to improved architecture has approximately 6x the power of the original Pi, plus the machine now has a gig of ram.
I'm going to give it a go and will report my findings (once I get one!)
If it all goes well I am in the process of getting my GA framework up and running where I will be able to run it on the PI2 and improve my bot (hopefully)!
6x a P2-300 is still pretty much crap by our standards. :-) But it sounds like a fun experiment, keep us posted!
It doesn't need to be lightning fast if you can leave it on all day every day running something. It only consumes around 4 watts compared to 500 for a desktop PC so its not going to break your bank to do so. I dunno if the power to wattage ratio is better than a desktop PC though! Are desktop PCs 100 times faster than a RP2? I would have thought not!
I can go to work, leave it running which is not what I would do with my desktop! :)
Sure, sure, let me know when you're willing to wait 4 days for what takes an hour on your desktop. :-) I've done GA on my quad core Core i7 (6-8 threads running safely) and let it run for days. I cringe at the thought of a cluster of P2-300s doing the same amount of work... weeks? years?
CPU power aside, I'd be curious to hear about your GA setup. I've looked into, but never done real battles with Robocode. I've only evolved guns with WaveSim. To evolve movement, I imagine you have a test bot loading the variable code from a .properties file, unless your GA code is compiling and outputting JARs, which is the ideal but a pain.
FWIW, GA with full bots is not hard with BerryBots - I've even written an example to solve a maze: http://berrybots.com/wiki/MazerEvolver .... But, alas, the automation API doesn't support the Raspberry Pi (yet?). The big hurdle is that the automation API supports user interaction - you specify what fields you want and it prompts the user with a GUI. I'd like to do an ncurses version for the Rpi at some point, but who knows if I'll get around to it - I'm more interested in the web UI at this point.
