ADLINK Launches Ampere Altra Developer Platform, Starting At $3999 USD

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ADLINK Launches Ampere Altra Developer Platform, Starting At $3999 USD

ADLINK Technology today announced a new developer platform based on Ampere Altra for software development, cloud, and related workloads. The ADLINK Ampere Altra Developer Platform is based on their COM-HPC module and pairs with 32, 64, or 80-core Ampere Altra processors...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=ADLINK-Ampere-Altra-Developer

[kvuj]

The pricing also isn't too far off from some of Raptor Computing's POWER9 platforms.

Especially with 32 cores!

Though I haven't seen anything related to open source firmware which is kinda of POWER's killer feature. I think I saw a while back that Ampere was working on opening their stack, but compiling and flashing of the firmware didn't seem as easy as Raptor's instructions.

[tildearrow]

See? Developer platform...


It's a step forward, but until a real desktop or workstation board is released, the Apple M1 has no competition.

For one thing it does have more cores and Ethernet ports than the Apple equivalent...

[Paradigm Shifter]

Though I haven't seen anything related to open source firmware which is kinda of POWER's killer feature. I think I saw a while back that Ampere was working on opening their stack, but compiling and flashing of the firmware didn't seem as easy as Raptor's instructions.

Can't POWER also do crazy levels of SMT?

See? Developer platform...


It's a step forward, but until a real desktop or workstation board is released, the Apple M1 has no competition.

For one thing it does have more cores and Ethernet ports than the Apple equivalent...

$4000 is a bit steep for me for a dev board - at least initially. It's a bit like the nVidia dev boards; the Jetson Nano I could afford just out of curiosity, but the newer ones are not a price I can just shrug and say, "Live and learn" if I can't get proof of concept working smoothly. If this was available as a quad/hexacore with a pair of SODIMM slots (plus NIC/USB etc) I might be able to buy one to tinker with it. As is, I'm safer convincing my boss to drop double the money (or more) on x86/CUDA.

Doesn't stop me wanting one of these, though.

[brucethemoose]

See? Developer platform...


It's a step forward, but until a real desktop or workstation board is released, the Apple M1 has no competition.

For one thing it does have more cores and Ethernet ports than the Apple equivalent...

Apples to oranges.

The M1 family is only great inside the OSX ecosystem, and has a completely different application focus.

[CochainComplex]

...I know the following comment is just moaning and nitpicking...but does this 4k dev station (case) has to look like a gaming setup of a 16 year old kid?

[Paradigm Shifter]

...I know the following comment is just moaning and nitpicking...but does this 4k dev station (case) has to look like a gaming setup of a 16 year old kid?

What, you like being able to concentrate on work?

It looks like they just bought a job-lot of cases which the system will fit into as cheaply as possible (without actually looking all "ghetto rig") and are using them (reminds me of a Coolermaster case?). I visited the website to see if there were any options and in the "ordering information" pages... there aren't even any prices! "For other solutions see your ADLINK sales representative"... uh...

The datasheet is typically sparse and the solution brief is locked behind a login screen, too. I dunno whether my browser is blocking something (I turned Brave Shields off to check) but everywhere I select in "Where to Buy" gives "No Results" whether for Sales Partner or ADLINK Office.

Huh.

Really not feeling like they actually want people to express an interest in purchasing.

[grok]

...I know the following comment is just moaning and nitpicking...but does this 4k dev station (case) has to look like a gaming setup of a 16 year old kid?

It looks like an ATX desktop and that's fine I think. If it looked like a 90s computer people would think it's out of place so that brings more questions. You can turn off lights or use the best color, which is...
You can use another case or use a hand-made one technically.

[grok]

Really not feeling like they actually want people to express an interest in purchasing.

If you're a contractor for X and Y and you tell them you have a registered business and you use ARM cloud things they'll be interested, it's fine, they don't want unproductive customers bitching on the internet about how their scanner doesn't work. They put a filter so that I dont buy it.

[tildearrow]

Apples to oranges.

The M1 family is only great inside the OSX ecosystem, and has a completely different application focus.

Well, its CPU happens to work better on Linux than OS XII...