Banana Pi Might Be Rolling Out A 24-Core ARM Board

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Banana Pi Might Be Rolling Out A 24-Core ARM Board

Making the rounds overnight has been word that the folks at Banana Pi are preparing to release a 24-core ARM board. On the surface it's exciting for ARM Linux enthusiasts, but the pricing has yet to be announced and that will largely determine the success of this reported next BPi product...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Banana-Pi-Possible-24-ARM-Core

[cbxbiker61]

Yep, the success would certainly be based on pricing. I just ordered a Khadas VIM2 8-core board to act as my ARM build server and that is ~$120. For me the advantage of something like the VIM2 is that I can re-purpose it at any time to be a media playback box. The existing $1200 24 core server box would take up more space and it would only be valuable to me as an ARM build server.

[schmidtbag]

The other Banana Pi products are decently priced, so I'm sure this will be ok. It'll be very interesting to see where this ends up. If it ends up being about $25 per core (so around $600) then I'd say that's a very solid price. Still proportionately more expensive than other ARM boards, but this is no average ARM board. Obviously, a lower price would be even better.

[starshipeleven]

Really hope this thing has server-grade expansion or peripherals. Like say Gigabit ethernet, PCIe slots and Sata for the very least.

[tuxd3v]

Any type of dev Board, with more than 4 cores, nowadays doesn't make sense with less than 4GB RAM..

I am evaluating OrangePi one plus @1.8Ghz, and its perfect in processing power( for its purpose of systems <= 1GBRAM ).
However this Board would have shine if it came with at least 4GB RAM, and Pcie...
This H6 processor really shine,and its a Cortex A53, 28nm..
Its a pity the pcie lack( Linux Driver not compatible by design.. ), and no mmc option.

I would buy a board with 8GB Ram, with a 2 x H6 cpus stacked on it!!

For a 24 core board ...,
I wouldn't buy it with less than 16/32 GB RAM..

[caligula]

The other Banana Pi products are decently priced, so I'm sure this will be ok. It'll be very interesting to see where this ends up. If it ends up being about $25 per core (so around $600) then I'd say that's a very solid price. Still proportionately more expensive than other ARM boards, but this is no average ARM board. Obviously, a lower price would be even better.

The Banana Pis might have stronger brand than other boards, but their support sucks. Their forum is horrible, the staff and admins are totally clueless, and there is no good documentation or up to date releases of the OS. I bought the original Banana Pro and Banana Pi Router and I've regretted ever since.

[Michael_S]

Any type of dev Board, with more than 4 cores, nowadays doesn't make sense with less than 4GB RAM..

One of the preview articles for this thing states that the device had 32GB of RAM, so if that's accurate then no worries there.

[jabl]

Does it support SBSA like the "real" arm64 servers, or does it need some custom kernel /device tree?

[elvenbone]

I bought the original Banana Pro and Banana Pi Router and I've regretted ever since.

Is the situation so bad for those two? The original Banana Pi has been mainlined for ~2 years.

[wizard69]

The other Banana Pi products are decently priced, so I'm sure this will be ok. It'll be very interesting to see where this ends up. If it ends up being about $25 per core (so around $600) then I'd say that's a very solid price. Still proportionately more expensive than other ARM boards, but this is no average ARM board. Obviously, a lower price would be even better.

ARM cores are cheap! That is they take up little die space compared to almost any alternative so paying $25 a core would not be acceptable at all. Even more so if they are low performance cores as speculated in this article. A more rational figure would be about $2.50 a core. In the end the basic board needs to be less than $85 dollars. That is about $60 for the cores and the balance covering the rest of the board.