Linaro & Co Are Working On An ARM 24-Core Desktop / Developer Box

[Guest]

If it was ITX with 4 DIMM slots, and x16 PCIe slot (may be x8 or x4, but x16 size), and cheaper (could be weaker). Then, it might be good candidate as motherboard for compact ARM workstation. For example, to be used with mini ITX cases made by InWin.

[AndyChow]

This is a developer board, hence the price. What they really are selling is a scalable server with 1x8 to 8x8 of these CPUs, so up to 1536 cores, 4TB servers. You just buy this to test that it works how you want. Then you buy one of their servers.

[schmidtbag]

If it was ITX with 4 DIMM slots, and x16 PCIe slot (may be x8 or x4, but x16 size), and cheaper (could be weaker). Then, it might be good candidate as motherboard for compact ARM workstation. For example, to be used with mini ITX cases made by InWin.

I was thinking the same thing. It appears the current x16 slot only has x4 lanes, so unless there are an additional 2 lanes that aren't used on the motherboard, it becomes a somewhat awkward situation, where there aren't enough lanes to make a single x8 slot but you'll have spare unused potential lanes with the x4 slot. With an ITX board, they could have also maybe done a M.2 slot with x2 lanes instead of x4, or a couple of mini PCIe slots.

Either way, it seems they didn't put enough thought into this board.

[tildearrow]

Typo:

This micro-ATX motherboard will also have replacable DIMM memory modules and PCI Express slots.

[microcode]

If only somebody would come out with a DECENT ARM based motherboard for NAS purposes! How about (say) 8 x SATA ports as well as dual NICs. Built-in open source supported graphics adaptor (like the Broadcom ones that Eric Anholt is working on) like the AMD APUs would be fine. If I had enough knowledge/time then I would work on an open source MALI driver. For me, 16 x CPUs + (say) VC5 graphics would be OK. If somebody could produce a turbocharged Pi-like device with

* 8 or 16 core 64 bit ARM SOC capable of addressing over 4GB of RAM - say up to 16GB with SODIMM slots
* VC5 graphics (or get ARM to open source MALI properly)
* 4 x USB 3.x channels (would do instead of SATA if USB was fast enough - through USB 3.0 to SATA adaptors)
* Decent 2 x 1GB network channels

Even if this board was (say) $200+ then it would be a killer.

I have a Pine64 board connected to (and powered by) a beefy USB 2.0 hub which also powers 2 x 3TB laptop drives (with USB to SATA converters). Even this humble little board (which has plenty of problems and shortcomings) can stream data quite happily at 30MB/sec+ through 1Gbit Ethernet as a NAS running Ubuntu Server 16.04 (for ARM).

A Pi-killer (like the dream one I have mentioned above) would also work as a lightish-weight laptop. I have a Pinebook with 2GB RAM and 64GB eMMC and that is a great little Netbook (running Ubuntu Mate skinned like Linux Mint Mate).

Come one guys - it cannot be THAT hard to produce a decent ARM NAS motherboard or developer class ARM laptop.

Why would you want a GPU on a NAS?

[microcode]

Yet another reason to buy Radeon: if it's got PCIe, you can run Mesa and AMDGPU on it. This is why I'm eager to see the first RISC-V dev boards with PCIe (and preferably IOMMU). There's no better way to prototype than to pretend that you're on a PC.

[Zan Lynx]

Why would you want a GPU on a NAS?

If you use it for video transcoding GPU acceleration can be nice. That's why I put a RX 460 in my Ryzen NAS build, although I haven't used it for anything yet.

[marty1885]

My problem with this board is that the CPU is way too weak for anything that is not embedded. Even for specialized servers. The only reasonable thing I can think of this thing to do is to be a GPU deep learning server. The ultra low power cores can help reduce the power consumption. But the board is marked towards desktop and have really limited # of PCIe lannes? WTF are the devs thinking.
If it is designed to be a small demo/evaluation version board for a scalable server SoC that the silicons can be connected together to form a more powerful one. Making it a ARM version of the Epiphany processor. It's way too expensive. The thing can be beaten easily by a GPU or (hopefully) an array of Ryzen chips interconnecting.

I'm really confused what point this board is trying to make

[smitty3268]

I'm really confused what point this board is trying to make

It's a dev box for people making ARM software. So instead of cross compiling on your desktop, copying the files over to some ARM device, testing, and debugging remotely, you can just do everything locally, setup CI build testing, etc.

[andreano]

☑ Not stuck with too little RAM
☑ Not tied to a GPU with doomed support
☑ SATA
☑ Plenty of USB 3.0

This is why they can take a ridiculous price.


☑ Same thread count as Threadripper 1920X at comparable price

That should narrow down the audience.


☒ A big core or two (A73 these days)

Blatantly missing.