Live data from Hacker News

System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage

system76.com

31–40 of 127 posts

Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage

#31

This is a Gigabyte server, probably one of the following: http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Rack-Server/R150-T61-rev-110 http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Rack-Server/R150-T62-rev-100 What value-add does System76 provide?

There's a little icon on those Gigabyte pages which says "DDR4 2133", but the System76 page seems to indicate support for DDR4-2400. Not sure anymore.

Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage

#32
post #28
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought one of their laptops years ago and liked it; I eventually bequeathed it to a sister-in-law, who seems to like it well enough. I probably won't buy their stuff again, because I only run Debian these days, but I think that they're a decent company and I recommend them to folks who want to run Ubuntu.

Out of curiosity, where do you go for pre-built Debian systems, or completely OS-less systems? I would think that merely having the promise of Ubuntu support out of the box would make it better to install Debian, than on some random Windows machine.

> Out of curiosity, where do you go for pre-built Debian systems, or completely OS-less systems?

I've been pretty happy with Zareason so far, although these days one does often have to contact them ahead of time to be sure Debian will run fine.

> I would think that merely having the promise of Ubuntu support out of the box would make it better to install Debian, than on some random Windows machine.

I'd have thought so, too, except that getting Debian onto my System76 laptop was no fun at all. Ubuntu really is tolerant of non-free software, binary blobs and other things that I'd like to get away from.

Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage

#33
post #6

aah system 76. I hope they have improved recently with their customer service but I had a horrible experience with them back in 2013 when they had to replace a keyboard (the CEO actually sent an email explaining how shitty their keyboard was) and when I asked for a refund, they simply refused. NO refunds. I had to literally open the laptop myself and install the new keyboard. I am not one of those types who asks for…

So we have a data point from four years ago and you are still harboring a resentment so hard that you feel you need to air your grievances for a completely different product. I get it. Hell hath no fury like a customer scorned.

Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage

#34

I wanted to like System76. I had a dead pixel on a new machine that was to be my new workhorse AAAAAND that's how I learned what a dead pixel policy is! Turns out, theirs was rubbish. The whole laptop wasn't elegant or well constructed, but it was durable. I had to send it in for repairs once, that went well. Still, I'd never buy anything of theirs again. Ever.

I had 3 on a brand new macbook years ago and apple wouldn't take it back because it wasn't enough. they were very noticeable.

Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage

#35
Ordered a 1U from them. Going on a month now with no delivery date yet and no indications there would be a problem until after we ordered. Not a big deal for us, we can wait and ordered it because it was cheap, but consider yourselves warned.

Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage

#36
post #19

From $6399USD. That's quite a price-tag, but a lot less than a high-spec Xeon server where the CPUs alone are $3000 each. It'll be interesting to see benchmarks of how this performs.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating-cavium-thu... https://www.servethehome.com/exclusive-first-cavium-thunderx... https://www.servethehome.com/cavium-thunderx-micro-benchmark...

The big deal is on the http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating-cavium-thu... page: the MySQL transactions per watt is absymal compared to the Xeon D. Really, badly absymal. So... this is not a useful server. When someone says ARM I am thinking "low power" but this is a 120W CPU which is beaten by the 65W Xeon D-1581. Pass. Let me emphasize: very often I do not care about absolute performance numbers because your power budget is almost always limited in a data centre, what I care about is performance per watt. Which here the Xeon D wins. Like, big time. Tangentially: this is where Ryzen battle will be as well. I was crunching the numbers from http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph11170/85875.png and the Ryzen 1700 is only beaten in performance per watt by the i7 7700T and only by 5% while in performance for dollar the 1700 has a comfy advantage over every Intel CPU, 62% over the i7 7700T which is a lot to pay for a 5% advantage. This shows the Ryzen is practically on par with the i7 series: the 7700T is 4 cores in 35W, the 1700 is 8 cores in 65W and they are head-to-head. I want to see the 8 and 16 core Xeon D chips battle Naples but I am afraid AMD is simply not yet in the low wattage game. But I really would love to see some competition there!

Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage

#38
I got Lemur 14" laptop a while back and absolutely hated the build quality. The keyboard is terrible and the screen has the worst viewing angles of any laptop I've ever owned. I got tired of it after 4 or 5 months and converted it to a home server and it's been super reliable in that mode since 2014. AND it also has the benefit of staying online during power outages.

Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage

#39
post #37

http://www.cavium.com/pdfFiles/ThunderX_CP_PB_Rev1.pdf?x=2 Spec sheet for the CPU is there. I just don't see how IO doesn't end up murdering performance. 16MB shared L2 is across all the cores?

The cores are so wimpy that 16MB is an appropriate amount. For comparison a Xeon D only has 12MB.

Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage

#40
post #2

I see that they're releasing a new laptop: https://system76.com/laptops/galago This is probably the first laptop from them that I could consider buying, judging solely on that small picture of it. Still super-thick, and I don't know if I would feel comfortable buying that over the XPS, but at least it's got HiDPI, which for the price they sell their laptops for I feel should be included.

Judging from that video, it seems they don't spend a lot of money on advertising.

Yes, that was pretty bad.

It almost seems like they're showing how thick it is...

Post reply on HN