ClearFog ARM Workstation Speed Even More Compelling But Now Called HoneyComb LX2K

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ClearFog ARM Workstation Speed Even More Compelling But Now Called HoneyComb LX2K

ClearFog was the name for that 16-core mini-ITX workstation development board/platform that we've been eager to learn more about with its $500~750 USD price point, extensive networking connections, M.2, SATA, socketed DDR4 memory support, and other features we've been long desiring to see out of an affordable yet powerful ARM workstation. It turns out that dream board is being renamed to the HoneyComb LX2K and its performance is increasingly competitive with AMD/Intel x86 enthusiast offerings...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ClearFog-HoneyComb-LX2K

[tildearrow]

...couldn't use image graphs?

[linux4kix]

...couldn't use image graphs?

Those were quick snippets I pulled from my logs to illustrate a point that we are testing the full capabilities of the board and the results we are finding. Ultimately we will write this up as a white paper, but as an engineer who has been working on SBC ARM chips for many years I was intrigued by the results and wanted to post them in the easiest manner possible. I admitted in the post that these results while not isolated, were picked to prove that ARM based CPUs were not inherently inferior to modern x86. I did not even pick the biggest wins, nor the biggest losses, but some medium results that showed there is validation to our classification that this is a workstation class platform.

These results are also an overclock which obviously production customers will not use, but we are open to making this available to the developer community. This is partially the reason for the branding change. We will focus to release the full benchmarks very soon that include base dev relase (2.0GHZ) - production (2.2GHz) - recommended OC (2.4 GHz) and max stable OC (2.5 GHz).

While the results are exciting, we also can't guaranty every chip will achieve this performance. These are lab results only. As the production cycle progresses we will do internal testing and be as transparent as possible on results.

[Wingfeather]

What might the boot situation for this board look like? I had to give up trying to get an Espressobin to work with my preferred distro (NixOS) because of their vendor-custom U-boot horror...

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Well, A72 is indeed more interesting than A53 cores in Developerbox. A bit sad that it's not A73 and there is no second M.2 (at least it's not mentioned anywhere) but this is bearable at this price point.

[wizard69]

Sometimes being transparent isn't the best approach, if you get a batch of processors that don't overclock somebody will be put out over the failure to reach an overclock that you describe here. Some people simply don't grasp english even if they are native speakers of the language.

While the results are exciting, we also can't guaranty every chip will achieve this performance. These are lab results only. As the production cycle progresses we will do internal testing and be as transparent as possible on results.

[Michael]

Those were quick snippets I pulled from my logs to illustrate a point that we are testing the full capabilities of the board and the results we are finding. Ultimately we will write this up as a white paper, but as an engineer who has been working on SBC ARM chips for many years I was intrigued by the results and wanted to post them in the easiest manner possible. I admitted in the post that these results while not isolated, were picked to prove that ARM based CPUs were not inherently inferior to modern x86. I did not even pick the biggest wins, nor the biggest losses, but some medium results that showed there is validation to our classification that this is a workstation class platform.

These results are also an overclock which obviously production customers will not use, but we are open to making this available to the developer community. This is partially the reason for the branding change. We will focus to release the full benchmarks very soon that include base dev relase (2.0GHZ) - production (2.2GHz) - recommended OC (2.4 GHz) and max stable OC (2.5 GHz).

Can't wait to see them, someone should send them over to Cavium... They won't send me hardware to review on the basis that the Phoronix Test Suite is somehow biased against ARM but I guess they don't understand PTS all that well with using actual upstream programs/sources for benchmarking.

[linux4kix]

What might the boot situation for this board look like? I had to give up trying to get an Espressobin to work with my preferred distro (NixOS) because of their vendor-custom U-boot horror...

Initially, u-boot or edk2 with either device-tree, ultimately edk2 with acpi for SBSA compliance.

[linux4kix]

Well, A72 is indeed more interesting than A53 cores in Developerbox. A bit sad that it's not A73 and there is no second M.2 (at least it's not mentioned anywhere) but this is bearable at this price point.

Not all SOC implementations are the same. Please review my benchmarks at 2GHz against the Odroid N2 which has A73's. It is more about the power limit the cores are designed for.

[linux4kix]

Sometimes being transparent isn't the best approach, if you get a batch of processors that don't overclock somebody will be put out over the failure to reach an overclock that you describe here. Some people simply don't grasp english even if they are native speakers of the language.

This could be an issue, but not something we are going to concern ourselves over. The pricing and support are for the SOC specifications we are selling as listed on the website. Even at the default clock speeds it is a very compelling product and probably the best ARM hardware you can buy for the price. As I stated we will post benchmarks between the different clock states and highlight the default clock speed. There is only so much we can control.