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Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#31

Post by dwood_dev »

ndiddy wrote: post #10

The performance on this machine is similar to the Snapdragon 8cx from Microsoft’s first big Windows on ARM push a few years ago (so nowhere near even the 4 year old Apple M1) while the idle power draw is similar to an x86 computer. If they’re not targeting either performance or power efficiency, I’m not sure who would be interested in this computer. I’d say that if you can tolerate Mac OS X for your use case, a used…

If you can't tolerate macOS, you can get a used M1/M2 which will run Linux really well.

That's a challenge this machine has, it has to compete with things like a used 64GB M1 Max Mac Studio for $900 when the equivalent config is $700. The M1 Max would be wildly faster in everything.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#32

Post by geerlingguy »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #27
bluGill wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this niche. Linux does not need to run on an ARM machine for almost anything. Linux has very good cross platform abilities and so you can build and test on whatever CPU (presumably x86, but any CPU will do), and then when you are confident that everything works cross compile for ARM and things will almost always work. You also have qemu which is slow but plenty good for running some code where this…

I think I'm probably in the target market for this. I have a board using Linux on an Arm v9.2 chip. It'd be nice to run unit tests with exactly the same binaries and compiler settings. The actual boards are a bit expensive and unavailable for CI purposes (vs HIL). Graviton isn't v9.2. QEMU doesn't support v9.2. This does. Probably won't end up buying this, but it's not hard to imagine a small number of other people w…

This, basically - if you target embedded, automotive, mobile (Android, perhaps), then having good native machines supporting the latest Armv9 features is helpful, compared to emulating it on another machine, or running stuff in the cloud.

Like I said, a niche, but not one that's nonexistent. I know Minisforum was hyping the Android angle a bit, though in my small amount of mobile app dev, I was happy enough doing that on my Mac.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#35

Post by bluGill »

geerlingguy wrote: post #32
AlotOfReading wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm probably in the target market for this. I have a board using Linux on an Arm v9.2 chip. It'd be nice to run unit tests with exactly the same binaries and compiler settings. The actual boards are a bit expensive and unavailable for CI purposes (vs HIL). Graviton isn't v9.2. QEMU doesn't support v9.2. This does. Probably won't end up buying this, but it's not hard to imagine a small number of other people w…

This, basically - if you target embedded, automotive, mobile (Android, perhaps), then having good native machines supporting the latest Armv9 features is helpful, compared to emulating it on another machine, or running stuff in the cloud. Like I said, a niche, but not one that's nonexistent. I know Minisforum was hyping the Android angle a bit, though in my small amount of mobile app dev, I was happy enough doing tha…

portable code is starting to become valued in automotive. In the 8 bit era rewriting for each new modle was a good choice but there days code is too complex and so we need our code to survive longer than the cpus we start with. Often the cpus a car starts with are out of porduction before the model run is done. Car volumes are not big enough to keep a fab open.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#36

Post by daviddever23box »

It would be great to have a full Snapdragon X Elite-based box, with working Wi-Fi drivers.

That said, it feels as if the fragmentation in the non-Windows space ends up being worse for non-Intel/AMD platforms, both commercially and from a devrel perspective. Qualcomm and Apple still have the best arm64 platforms above a Raspberry Pi.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#37

Post by LeoPanthera »

I bought an MS-01 (the earlier Intel version of this) for homelab use and I don't know what was wrong with it, but Debian just refused to reboot on it. It would boot, but not reboot, freezing up every time.

I replaced it with an Asus NUC, which came with a non-functional BIOS, but was eventually coerced into working after forcibly flashing it.

I haven't had a lot of luck with mini PCs.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#39

Post by arjie »

This was my experience looking for an ARM Linux machine. The Apple M-series processors were so far ahead of anything else currently available on the market for the price. And the Ampere stuff is in an Epyc class of price with not an Epyc class of performance.

Re: Minisforum Stuffs Entire Arm Homelab in the MS-R1

#40

Post by layer8 »

NewJazz wrote: post #29
ndiddy wrote: post #10

The performance on this machine is similar to the Snapdragon 8cx from Microsoft’s first big Windows on ARM push a few years ago (so nowhere near even the 4 year old Apple M1) while the idle power draw is similar to an x86 computer. If they’re not targeting either performance or power efficiency, I’m not sure who would be interested in this computer. I’d say that if you can tolerate Mac OS X for your use case, a used…

Doesn't asahi run on the Mac mini? Probably better than it does on a laptop, no peripherals to support

Thunderbolt and DP Alt mode aren’t supported, and there are issues with power management (sleep/wake).
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