Compute Blade: Your rack-mountable ARM cluster

Update 51
6 months ago – Wed, Feb 11, 2026 at 03:20:09 PM

Hello,

There are two pieces of news, one bad and one good

1. Production has not yet begun.

For a long time, I was convinced that the problem lay in how I structured my processes and that I was not ‘professional’ enough to work with a large factory. But you know what? That's not the case.
Looks like there are simply manufacturers or managers who prioritise and put startups and small orders at the bottom of their lists. And they literally drag out every single step.
The experience of the last six weeks is a stark confirmation of this.
Why were there no updates? To be honest, I had nothing to say, and I was very worried about it, I didn't even open Kickstarter. Sorry about that, I promised an update, but I messed up because of some very unpleasant and super unexpected news. I wrote briefly on Discord, but I keep forgetting that not all Kickstarter participants are there. The next here update will be short, but it will be before the end of the month, I'll try.

What happened:
There are many updates, so I will briefly remind you that in the summer of 2025, there was a ‘Silicon Valley’ (TV series) spin-off with my company. It split up, I took all the IP and components related to Compute Blade, as well as Kickstarter, and founded a new company where I was the only one. I also got a new job. I began to support my company with my own funds and found a partner, a large distributor, pishop.us. In July 2025, the factory sent me five pallets of parts (worth about $200k) for the production of Compute Blade and closed the old contract. They also sent me a list of all the components. 
By the end of the year, everything was ready to continue production in partnership with pishop.us. Based on the list of parts we had, we bought the missing ones and, after lengthy correspondence, sent all the parts to production in early January.

Delivery took about 5 days, and counting the parts took almost 10. And what did we find out? There were fewer parts on the pallets than on the original list! Yes, we didn't count them, there are several tens of thousands of parts, and there is no reason to distrust the manufacturer. They are a large manufacturer and know how to count, right?
In short, they were surprised, but from their point of view, of course, I was to blame.
Then we had another two and a half weeks of correspondence on this issue. Basically, my questions were answered with ‘we are looking into it and will get back to you asap’, ‘we will recount and get back to you asap’, etc. (I really wanted to share screenshots of this wonderful correspondence, but I was told that it is absolutely unacceptable to do so and that it could end badly from a legal standpoint.)
Right now, I am waiting for answers to two questions:
1. How much can we produce under the current conditions?
2. How much will it cost to purchase the missing parts? (according to my estimates, it will be between $9,000 and $23,000, as prices are very unstable at the moment)

2. Development of the Orchestrator and change of concept

A small demo is available on Discord. The project has already been improved and better adapted to specific tasks, so I will soon record a more complete demonstration in a production environment.

A long time ago, I talked about the orchestrator and showed some beautiful pictures. We had a backend that worked with PXE and had an agent on the devices. But it didn't work stably. PXE requires specific DHCP settings, which greatly lowers the entry threshold. Having an additional DHCP just for these settings works very poorly. As a result, I revised the concept and found what I think is the ideal option: HTTP Boot. This is a truly underrated feature of Raspberry Pi, along with the ability to customise EEPROM records. 

Without going into technical details at this stage, here's what we got:
1. Network installation on empty devices (you will need to start them once from a USB flash drive or SD card, after which you can remove it)
2. The ability to completely reset the Raspberry Pi/Compute Blade without having to reconnect or reconfigure the device in the admin panel
3. Full recovery in case of SD card/NVMe failure
4. Workflow for mass configuration of devices using a template. Disk cleanup, OS installation, adding an orchestrator agent to the OS, and installing SSH keys or certificates.
5. Ability to edit configurations and even the boot order on devices from the admin panel.

In the coming weeks, we will set up a server at the JetBrains company (where more than 80 Compute Blades are currently deployed). And we will test it in real-world conditions. I will record a demo and be sure to share it. There is no clear business model for this product yet. But I am leaning towards a cloud Orchestrator with a package of free installations (4-5 devices). As well as team plans and enterprise plans, with the possibility of local deployment. 
The agent will definitely be open-source. As for the server side, we need to assess the feasibility, demand, and your feedback in general.

Just a couple of screenshots of the current version (they are already real, not just a piece of Figma):

___

With sincere appreciation
Ivan

Update #50
8 months ago – Tue, Dec 23, 2025 at 12:11:13 PM

Hello, this anniversary update, right before Christmas, was supposed to be something awesome and would have put an end to the project (in a good way).

But as you may have guessed, it won't be today.

The current situation hasn't changed much since the last update. Yes, I paid for the production of an additional batch, as planned. Yes, we've been sending out Kickstarter rewards for the past month and a half (you could see this on Discord), and we've actually emptied our warehouses in the hope of receiving a batch from production. Yes, we found a way to ship from Europe to other countries, and this will allow us to solve the problem of orders not covered by distributors in Europe and the US/CA.

But despite all the preliminary agreements, production did not manage to complete the batch on time. I don't want to make any accusations or excuses here before the holidays.

I messed up again. I didn't push them enough, I didn't call every day, I didn't go there and wait outside their office for an answer and progress.

I'm sorry.

I understand that my apology doesn't make it any easier for you. At the beginning of the year, when production finally starts, I will publish the key points from my correspondence with the manufacturer for everyone who needs proof.

The batch will definitely be completed and shipped as soon as it is ready. 

And finally, I just want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, smiles, time with your family, and rest. A healthy back, when needed, and healthy sleep, which is relevant to everyone.

Thank you for following the project, hating it, watching it like a Netflix series, or already receiving your device and being shocked that the project is not yet closed.

And may the Force be with you.

Ivan

Update #49
10 months ago – Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 08:54:41 AM

Hi!

The update will not be very big, as we have not progressed as far as we would have liked over the past two weeks. But I can assure you that work has been ongoing.

Except for that part of this time, our manager at Pi3G was on vacation, and the situation there was on hold for a while.

Just over 30 orders were shipped. Pishop handled complex orders in the US, where it was necessary to correspond with customers personally. This was all due to confusion with SKUs, a large number of accessories, and upgrades. I talked about this before. However, just in case, never do a Kickstarter with multiple options (too many), and definitely don't offer to change those options when choosing delivery terms.

*moment of self-reflection* It was probably done to squeeze the maximum revenue out of the project's success. We were able to raise an additional €225,343.21 through BackerKit on this. Additionally, we spent €32,825.95 on advertising and €1,700.00 on mailing, which ultimately did not bring any benefit. The headache it caused was definitely not worth it.

By the way, if you are interested in a retro analysis, let me know in the comments. I will tell you everything in detail with figures and a timeline in one of the future updates.

What else has been done?

Negotiations with production in the EU have progressed enough that we have already drawn up plans. We expect to have new Blades, Fan Units, and finally a heatsink for CM5 (backward compatible with CM4) in December.

As for my main job (you remember that I now work at JetBrains and don't take any more money out of the project), I was in China and happened to visit the NexPCB factories. They are the ones who made the RC2 Blades. And, coincidentally, the PiKVM. I also ate pigeon, but that's another story.

So, probably after the current batch, we will transfer production to them. They have grown significantly since RC2, and, more importantly, they can produce small batches quickly. This will allow us to respond much more flexibly to demand and develop new things.

Orders in the UK seem to be going smoothly, with about a quarter of all orders now shipped. We will continue in the same vein. Due to complications with commercial invoices for UPS, this is labor-intensive and takes more time.

And just some interesting numbers from current production. Initially, it was supposed to be 60k + heatsinks. But now it's like this, without heatsinks (they are separate). This is the cost of assembly only, excluding the price of the PCB and components, as well as their delivery:

It's not like selling software with its marginality :)

______

I wish you success with your personal projects!
Ivan

Update #48
10 months ago – Fri, Oct 17, 2025 at 03:09:32 AM

Hello!

Let's get straight to the point. If you haven't been following the updates and how things are going on Discord, here are the numbers:
820 orders have been shipped in full.
651 remain, of which about 250 are partial orders where we need to ship a T-shirt, AI, or HSM module.
This happened because after shipping a partial order, we created a new one so as not to lose what had not been shipped.

More details and current affairs:
Over the past 5 weeks, we have collected data from pi3g and pishop, which, as you know, are currently handling orders worldwide. Now all the data is centralized. However, there are still some issues that need to be clarified, involving about 20-25 orders. This issue arose because orders are logged in different ways. However, the situation can be assessed fairly accurately using the graphs below. Just to be clear, about 1/6 of the unfulfilled orders at the moment are incomplete orders (i.e., most of them have already been shipped).
Shipments to the UK began this week. DDP shipping turned out to be a difficult task after the confusion with invoices, the split of Uptime Industries, and the transfer of IP, which I discussed in the "previous series".
 

I can say that I was wrong about the timing again. I apologize. The pace isn't ideal, and we're running out of devices. According to the original plan, production should have already resumed. We're communicating with the current manufacturer, but they've become super slow, as I already mentioned (they have grown significantly over the past 2 years). Enterprise sucks. So I'll sign a couple of NDAs with other factories in Europe and ask them for quotes next week. Perhaps this will be a way out of the situation. 

It turned out that we were short about 1500 latches for the next batch (5000 Blades + accessories), and it seems easier, faster, and even cheaper to print them, which is what I am doing now. 200 pieces can be made in about 15 hours:

In terms of finances and components for blades:
I have parts for ~5,000 blades (except for 1.5 k latches) and critical components for another ~12,000. It costs around 200k euros. But I can't solder them by hand. Although it seems that if I had started three months ago, there would already be progress.
The company has more than $150k in its account, which is also enough considering that I don't get a salary there.
So, we can say that we are back to where we were a year ago, but now everything is much more stable and predictable (except for production at the moment).
If you haven't read the previous updates, these figures will probably not be very relevant to you. The story is already worthy of a spin-off of the Silicon Valley series.

__________
Live long and prosper,
Ivan

Update #47
12 months ago – Sun, Sep 07, 2025 at 01:18:13 PM

Hello!

I will respond regarding shipments next week. At this time, I only have the exact figures for the US/CA, with 172 orders remaining in total.

But this update will be about something else. As I said in the last update, I needed to decide where to go.

I have decided. The master plan is as follows:

- Based on a partnership with Pishop.us
- Next week, the components will be sent to production, and production will resume. This will be enough to cover the Kickstarter obligations
- The AI and Zymbit modules will be produced based on the prototypes I have
- At least one more person will join the support team. I can't handle it on my own


___
I believe that everything will work out now
Ivan