Compute Blade: Your rack-mountable ARM cluster

Update 56
2 months ago – Sat, Jun 20, 2026 at 06:37:12 AM

Hello,

It's hard to believe after everything that's happened, but we've received most of the devices from that complicated shipment.

• 2,536 Basic Blades
• 471 TPM Blades
• 1,000 Standard Fan Units
• 998 Smart Fan Units
   

Because of the missing parts, there were many minor replacements, and testing took a long time. But it looks like everything is fine.

Next week, we’ll ship part of the batch to the U.S. and keep the rest in Europe. We’ll continue to ship orders. However, at this time, there are orders that do not include DEV blades (which we expect to receive from the manufacturer by the end of the month).

I remember that I promised the Orchestrator a long time ago. An early version of it is running in a test environment, but a lot of minor fixes have piled up that need to be implemented before release, and unfortunately, that hasn’t been done yet.

There are also other accessories that require attention (the AI module and the HSM module). I’m in touch with the manufacturer (another one) that can produce them, but I haven’t received the final figures yet.

I'm sorry I haven't been writing as often as I should have,
Ivan

Update 55. A new (final?) wave of shipments is coming soon
3 months ago – Wed, May 27, 2026 at 02:32:54 PM

Hi, over the past few weeks, my correspondence with the production team has consisted of exchanging emails every 1–3 days. We’ve already exchanged over 85 emails on this topic.

First, I’ll describe the current situation. For once, there’s been a positive development.
So here’s the update:
- Fan units 1000 Basic + 998 Smart – shipped and received
- 1,215 Basic blades are in logistics on manufacture; 1,348 Basic blades and 468 TPM units are currently at the factory awaiting packaging.

- 1,994 pcs of DEV Blades are blocked by 600 pcs of LinkPP (which were “lost” by the factory earlier and reordered). Regarding the timeline for these, I was told “shipment from HK 05-27 + shipment ~1 week + production ~2 weeks.”

Now, here are a few highlights from this crazy story:

Ordering the antistatic bags 76x305mm (to replace the lost ones) took much longer than expected, so I asked them to change the bags to 254x305mm from stock. There was also the option of 400x400mm ESD bubble bags, which we almost ended up choosing, but fortunately, we managed to avoid them.

The second “amusing” story involved serial numbers. I quote: "Our operator got mixed up, and engraved DEV Blade SN from 0001615 to 0002301"

So the numbers ended up shifted like this (we couldn't just throw away the circuit boards):
Plan for DEV blades was: start from SN0000013
But we have 686 pcs. : SN0001615 to SN0002301  
So remaining 1312 pcs. will be: SN0000303 - SN0001614 
 

Unfortunately, it took days of back-and-forth correspondence to clarify the details before we reached these conclusions. Then there was a pause of nearly two weeks during which I received no replies at all; it turned out that the connectors hadn’t arrived. I’m now waiting for a response with tracking information on when the devices will be shipped from the logistics warehouse. 
Once we receive the blades at the Pi3G warehouse, we’ll ship them to the US; last time, there were no issues with this.
At the moment, I’m trying to process incoming messages regarding changes to shipping addresses and problematic devices (fortunately, there aren’t many of those).

P.S. I apologize for the delay with this update; once again, I really wanted to share some great news. But it turned out to be just okay.

Sincerely,
Ivan

Update 54
4 months ago – Fri, Apr 17, 2026 at 02:22:50 PM

Hello!

Overall, I just wanted to let you know about another delay. However, we do have the final figures as of now.
Fan units (1000 STA + 1000 Smart) are expected to be finalized (packaging) on 04.27. The assembly was completed in early April. 
They also started production with Blades basic 2536 pcs – now waiting for packing material to arrive at the end of April.

Blades DEV 1994pcs and TPM 468pcs will start production in the coming week, still waiting for the new Link-PP Ethernet connectors (originals lost by the factory)

The original plan was to manufacture the TPM and DEV units and ship them in early April. But due to delivery delays, the schedule has shifted, and it looks like I’ll be receiving the entire batch together

As soon as they receive the packaging materials (which were also lost by the factory), they’ll send them to Pi3G, and things will get moving. Unfortunately, they hadn’t received the materials due to “logistical issues”.

As I said, they “lost” the packaging as well, so we ordered new boxes based on the old designs. The box will be gray - don’t worry - the sticker on the box will have the latest information. We won’t confuse it with the earlier batch, which had power supply issues.

   

I understand that you are tired of updates (regardless of whether you received the Blades or not). With every update, I start to believe more and more in some kind of evil fate. It’s just unbelievable that so many problems keep piling up one after another, honestly.

But don’t want to end the update on such a note. I believe that the project will see it through to the end and go down in history as one of the longest-running SUCCESSFUL projects. 

Best Regards,
Ivan

Update 53
5 months ago – Sat, Mar 21, 2026 at 01:12:55 PM

Hello,

Things have improved significantly since the last update.
Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find all the parts, but fortunately, we've found the most expensive (PoE modules) and unique ones.
This is what the situation on the production floor looks like right now: 
“The only thing we're working on now is 4 mechanical parts:  we can't find the 2,000 latches and nameplates you printed; we're doing final checks now.
We also need over 5,000 M2x2.5 screws and M2 nylon washers; we're doing one more count for them, and if they aren't found, we'll order them as well.”

The other missing components (mainly passive components, such as resistors, capacitors, and buttons) were ordered last week and are expected by the end of March. Production can begin immediately after that.
I can print the 2,000 latches myself, which is what I’m working on right now. 
I’ve already done this before and attached 6 bags of parts to the shipment. But they were “lost.” At the moment, no additional payments are required from me, and I hope it stays that way.
But I’ll have to buy more filament for the printer. Compared to everything else, that’s “no big deal.”
I’ll keep you updated promptly on Discord. I plan to post the next update here in early April or sooner, if production starts.

I’m also in the process of deploying an Orchestrator test cluster on 20 Compute Blades in JetBrains (Munich office). For now, I’m figuring out how to seamlessly integrate the TeamCity workflow into the OS reinstall and update process. In my next update, I’ll go into more detail and share some photos of the rack installation.

Thank you for your patience!
Ivan

Update 52
6 months ago – Sat, Feb 28, 2026 at 10:44:06 AM

Hello, I promised to provide updates more frequently.
Production of the new batch has not yet begun, but we have made progress. I will keep this brief.

As I mentioned, parts worth approximately $20k were lost. However, when the manager began calculating how much we could produce based on these inputs, it turned out that critical components worth $100k+ were missing.
And then it became clear to me that it wasn't a few parts that were “lost,” but a couple of pallets.
So we dug up the documents showing that 7 pallets had been shipped (I previously wrote 5, which was a mistake). The production signed delivery docks for the delivery of 7 pallets. But the manager reported that they only received 4!
 

We encountered significant delays in responses, and I had to literally demand a reply (despite the fact that five people from the manufacturer were already involved in the correspondence). This Tuesday, I asked them for “official” reasons and received the following:

"This Tuesday, I asked them for “official” reasons and received the following:
With 2025-06-30 shipment we had our internal altium and rivile codes marked on each reel and also they were invoiced in that way. With the current order the supplier of components is [Uptime] this mean we had to create new altium and rivile codes for each position – it is our internal policy to not mix client supplied components with our warehouse stock, because some positions could be consolidated while purchasing and producing products using same components .

The warehouse seeing old stickers from last year may got confused and missed some positions during the check with current material POs with new altium/rivile numbers, we also moved production to new site, this may also had some effect due to moving of warehouse location."

Note: NO apologies

I have been writing to them almost every day for the past two weeks. And the last message on Friday was:
"Today is the deadline for our warehouse to finalize the numbers of each component we have, I will come back with the final decisions from our side how many units we can start assembling asap"

I promised an update to you by the end of the month. And I warned on Tuesday that I needed answers from production, but I didn't receive anything. 

Well, luckily, I managed to contact the manufacturer's CEO on LinkedIn (I suspect you may be reading this right now, as I gave the full context. Hello!) He promised to conduct an internal investigation into the situation and seems like a very serious person, so let's keep our fingers crossed. 

On that note, I'll say goodbye and keep you posted. I have faith that the situation will finally move forward and that the components have not been lost after all.

I will be at the Embedded World exhibition on March 10–12 in Nuremberg at the JetBrains booth. I look forward to seeing you there. Let's agree on an update on Kickstarter after the exhibition (around March 15).

Ivan