I have 40 Nucs. Why you ask? I mean why not. (Yes they were free of course).

Huh free? That’s so unfair!#

I agree. I mean I worked hard for them of course, but definitely not hard enough to deserve them. My old school was getting rid of them, and I got permission from the IT technician, that is all.

So what are you going to use them for?#

Even after 2+ years, I haven’t quite yet decided, but I have decided on a project I am going to work towards. While it doesn’t have any practicality, it is a project I will learn a lot out of. The idea itself is quite simple.

There are a few features I want to mention at the moment which I am considering implementation:

  1. Communication between NUC’s
  2. Splitting a program
  3. Storing Data Efficiently

Communication#

I was thinking of making the NUC’s communicate between each other, with one central system. However I wanted to do so without using already existing services, like making the whole thing a kubernetes cluster, as that would be really boring.

For communication, I was planning on making my own custom presentation layer protocol, as none that I know do what I want how I want it to do it. I may go lower, but I don’t want to go lower than necessary at the beginning.

Splitting a program#

I plan to create something in the nucs which allows me to split a program and allocating tasks with static analysis on binary programs. For example, if a program which was tasked to be run 1 million times, has 3 functions, but one of them doesn’t rely on the previous function to run, while having different outcomes each time, I can simply split that out, and run that function ahead of time.

I want to make this possible, most likely starting with C. This is probably the most ambitious project out of the three.

Storing Data Efficiently.#

I don’t plan on coming up with anything novel on this part. I want to be able to transfer data efficiently, and store it effectively. I have not come up with much here but it would be cool to have something.

When will you get started?#

As this is such an ambitious project, I am still in the planning stages, documenting everything on pieces of paper, so I can refer to them later, and build up my idea properly.

I’ve made the mistake many times in the past to just start working towards a vague goal, without planning it properly. Often times this resulted in unfinished works, or big messes. While this is fine at times, I do want to try and make something out of my NUCS, so I hope I succeed in this.

I will try and keep this blog updated, but based on my track record, who knows what will happen. Anyways look forwards to this!