How does that thing boot and does it work with a mainline kernel I do not have to compile myself?
System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
101–110 of 127 posts
Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
#102thats impressive. 96 cores starting at 6k? did anybody else configure a silverback workstation with all the options to see what it would cost? ($33k...but wow.)
Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like different people have different opinion on stuff!
But they all share one thing in common: complaining on the Internet about products that aren't marketed toward them.
From the laptop's marketing page: "Thin".
Absent from the page: "repairable", "three USB ports", "32GB of RAM".
Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
#104Ordered 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.
I had a pretty crappy experience buying from them in 2007. At that time I think they were just getting started, so I chalked it up to "beginner's mistake", but it seems like these problems persist.
My data-point, as best I can recall:
- ordered a serval laptop
- long delays with minimal communication
- laptop arrived and motherboard died within a few days
After sending it back for repairs and haggling over the warrantee (DHL damaged the case, so they didn't want to pay for the motherboard initially), I got the thing replaced and it ran smoothly for many years.
EDIT: to be clear, I was ultimately happy with the device itself -- it finally died in 2013. It's rather the shipping/service/etc that was disappointing, though I've seen much worse.
Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
#105I 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.
Clevo is a huge Chinese OEM computer manufacturer which exclusively produces cheap, low-quality laptop computers. System76 selects Clevo configurations that are more-or-less compatible with Linux, puts a brand on them and sells them at a somewhat-inflated price.
I got a Clevo laptop a few years back from another company that works similarly. The spec was pretty good for the price, but I'll second the crappy build quality - they're very plasticy, and the heatsinks kept clogging up with dust destroying any cooling.
Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
#106I need this.
Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
#107So many product lines for such a small company. Laptops, Desktops, Servers. Not even Apple is able to effectively manage this many different products. I don't know much about them, but from my first impression it looks like a company with lack of focus. I'm not sure how they will be able to create killer product in any of the segments they're trying to compete in. Based on my above observation (admittedly superficial…
You a very much mistaken in your assessment.
System76 is neither OEM nor ODM. In fact, they are not a manufacturer at all - they assemble and ship systems designed by others.
Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
#108Sadly these gen-1 ThunderX cores are pretty poor in performance and not particularly power-efficient either. Cache performance is especially sucky. https://www.servethehome.com/exclusive-first-cavium-thunderx... http://www.anandtech.com/show/10353/investigating-cavium-thu... I hope that this is just a rebranded system showing the redyness of System76 and raising awareness about such products so that they're better po…
ARM was never particularly power-efficient. ARM was designed for low power, not power efficiency. The only case where an ARM core is more power efficient than a Xeon core is when they're both idle -- primarily because the ARM core was designed to be idle most of the time, while the Xeon core was designed to be in use most of the time.
ARM the architecture has very little to do with power efficiency as it is out of scope (except that the old the ARM 32bit instruction set was amenable for a very low power implementation).
ARM the company does design both low power and power efficient implementations of the ARM architecture. In fact for some specific power targets (mobile for example) they are more efficient than the corresponding Intel CPUs.
This is still irrelevant as Cavium design its own ARM cores from scratch (i.e. it doesn't use ARM reference designs) specifically for server use; now, they are not very good, but that's another story.
Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ability to actually buy it? I'm not joking; most ODM equipment is a hassle to buy, especially in small quantities for POCs.
also the ability to RMA faulty gear, get support, yell at someone to send you stuff faster, although ... judging from the comments in this thread, maybe not. fwiw, nobody in this space really gives a shit about you unless you're spending $50k or more, and realistically $250k or more on an ongoing basis. you're better off going to fry's or buying from a used gear vendor if you want small quantities.
There are plenty of smaller companies you can buy from to act as intermediaries. My experience (in the UK) is that you pay a small premium for it over the larger providers, but you certainly can get providers where you deal with someone who'll remember your name and actually answer the phone/e-mails even if you only order a single server here and there.
Re: System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
#110http://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 Anandtech article linked above explains that the Arm cores differ from the Xeon, since the pipeline architecture is not as complex.