Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit

lttlabs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 274 posts

Re: AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit

#191

Post by mhitza »

alexdns wrote: post #132
mhitza wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The repeated claim that all these different forms are not directly comparable is a very strange aspect. Only thing that separates them is the build quality and the extra 20W of boost the framework desktop and this variant support. They have a note on the thermals but no measurement of noise. Doesn't matter if it's stricly a whoosh or a whine, only if they bother people in the same room. And the small ones like Bosgam…

The framework has a noisy PSU , the bosgame is noisy However you can fix both - the bosgame leaves you a large margin to do so

Are you talking on particular about the M5? Is there room for a huge fan replacement?

Re: AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit

#192

Post by jmvoodoo »

aurareturn wrote: post #127
kamranjon wrote: post #2

In case it saves anyone some time (from the article): "The AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395(Strix Halo) processor has been available since Spring 2025 and the Halo doesn’t offer anything new on that front." It has the same 256 GB/s memory bandwidth limit as every board previously, not sure why this is even being released right now as if it's some new fangled thing - you can go get a Framework Desktop for roughly the same price…

A year ago, you could have bought this computer for $2000. Basically double the price now.

I bought a bosgame version for $2199 back in February.

Re: AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit

#193

Post by kristianp »

dabinat wrote: post #62
Tenoke wrote: post #51

I really want a 128gb+ machine but it's brutal to be at only 256 GB/s for $4k (especially with the drawbacks of both ARM and AMD). I fear that by the time the RTX Spark comes out it'd have to be $6k, and by the time a 128gb or more machine with 700+ GB/s comes out it'd be at $10k, way out of most consumers' hands. Edit: capitalized gb/s to GB/s.

A Mac Studio is a much better buy in terms of memory bandwidth, but impossible to buy in a 128 GB configuration. Honestly there aren’t great options right now and it’s probably better to wait for the market to be less insane.

The Mac Studio M3 Ultra with 96GB of RAM with 1Tb SSD costs $6799, but has triple the memory bandwidth [1]. It's almost twice the price of Strix Halo and when the M5 Ultras come out it will be interesting to see how much they go for. I expect a lot of demand for them!

There was a post recently, that showed the DGX spark is twice as fast as the M3 Ultra at prompt processing, but half as fast at output tokens [2]. They used gps-oss-120 for that test with a small context.

[1] https://gpuquicklist.com/apus?models=GB10%20Grace%20Blackwel...

[2] https://aimultiple.com/dgx-spark-alternatives , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48732679

Re: AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit

#194

Post by hparadiz »

SR2Z wrote: post #184
hparadiz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's being released right now because it's massively profitable and in high demand and has actually gone up in price over the past year so obviously AMD wants to cash in on that instead of selling these units to PC manufacturers at a lower price.

I also think this is forward looking and helps reanchor expectations for RAM and memory bandwidth, which historically have been areas where companies do value engineering. The memory shortages won't last forever; when companies start adding capacity I wouldn't be surprised to see massive sticks of RAM being sold for consumers.

Before AI I kinda thought more ram and faster ram was kind of useless because I had written off increased speeds as sort of a luxury whose only application is bloated unoptimized software. Boy was I wrong about that. But then why stop there?

Re: AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit

#195

Post by hamdingers »

827a wrote: post #142
ahmadyan wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same spec Framework costs $4k+ today, this is actually cheaper (albeit not as upgradable as framework).

Framework, weirdly, overcharges considerably for their SSDs. You can currently get a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB on Amazon for $390; Framework charges $625 for the Sandisk 850x 2TB, which has similar performance (and is being sold on Amazon for $530). If you DIY your own SSD, you can spec a Framework Desktop for below $4k; but not much below. Roughly the same price.

If you can supply your own SSD, case, and 120mm fan the mainboard is "only" $3,149

Re: AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit

#197

Post by codedokode »

bronson wrote: post #110
arnitdo wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well to be honest, there are a lot of NOOP pins on CPUs, but using them basically means fabbing a new die altogether, which is basically making a whole new CPU altogether.

This is an odd comment. Pins are seriously expensive. Companies don't just throw them in for fun. Usually they're necessary for signal integrity or packaging constraints.

Yes but not $1000 level expensive, right? It is just a tiny piece of metal, and on laptops there are no pins at all.

Re: AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit

#198

Post by fc417fc802 »

saltcured wrote: post #141
matt_heimer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd have a better portfolio right now if I invested in RAM instead of equities.

RAM is more like agricultural products (with short shelf-life) than commodities like fossil fuels, mineral ores, etc. You can manage an inventory or speculate on production, but you cannot really hold a "portfolio" of it in any sensible way. So, you should get into RAM futures if you believe this is more than a transient arbitrage sort of situation. All extant RAM will become obsolete as the demand shifts to newer, f…

> All extant RAM will become obsolete

Yes but on what timescale? Replacing the > 5 year old sticks in my laptop would currently cost well over half what the machine ran me when it was brand new.

Re: AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit

#199

Post by SwellJoe »

my123 wrote: post #187
SwellJoe wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unusual bootloader and custom hardware makes modifying and upgrading the OS a challenge. I work on robots that need a custom OS image loaded on the machine. The Nvidia Ubuntu version makes that a huge pain in the ass. They've got binary-only drivers that have to be there, the install/upgrade process is finicky and prone to failure (always recoverable, so far, but all the techs in production I work with have a har…

No the Spark uses UEFI + ACPI Regular Ubuntu or Fedora ISOs do work out of the box Just needs the Nvidia GPU driver install afterwards (And the realtek 10gbe module oot, or blocklist if not used)

Ah, that makes all the difference. Being normal has a lot of value. I mostly take it back. I still don't like the custom Ubuntu Nvidia ships, but if the system is normal any Linux distro for ARM works, it becomes an entirely viable thing.

Re: AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit

#200

Post by fc417fc802 »

codedokode wrote: post #72
codedokode wrote: post #67

32 Gb DDR4 RAM module has a bandwidth of 25 Gb/s and costs $160. If you buy 8 of these, you get 256 Gb RAM with 200 Gb/s bandwidth at $1280. And if you buy 16 x 16 Gb modules (each at $60) then you can get 400 Gb/s of bandwidth for $960. The only problem, you need 8 or 16 memory controllers. Memory controllers are not that expensive: Intel Core i3-14100F has 2 channel controller and costs $110, so we can estimate tha…

So what I am trying to say, industry took a wrong turn. Instead of moving to over-priced DDR5, they should just make even cheapest CPUs support 8/16 DDR4 channels. Because a 32Gb DDR5-4800 module costs $360, and two 32Gb DDR4-3200 modules cost $320, so you get twice more size, more bandwidth and it costs you less. DDR5 is just a rip off.

> even cheapest CPUs support 8/16 DDR4 channels

In addition to cost and possibly market segmentation, presumably the additional power consumption wouldn't be worth the tradeoff for laptop parts. If you want high channel count you've always been able to purchase power hungry datacenter gear. You can also pick up surplus 10 GbE or even 100 GbE fiber NICs to link up your beowulf cluster. You'll probably have to run a few new electrical circuits and a small bit of HVAC if you're installing this in a residential home but it's entirely doable to cram 10 kW in a closet if you feel like it.

Alternatively you could just rent cloud instances by the hour to avoid the hassle.

Post reply on HN