Appears that way, which makes sense for a dev platform. Why spend the resources on building a new mobo and all when you can just make some small changes and put it on its side?
That case is a 4U (?.. could be 5U) rackmount case (complete with PCIe riser and everything!) with a lid and some feet. Get the right rails and you can rackmount it just fine
On spec2017, the 32 core thunderx is as fast as the xeon 6148 (20 cores) when they're both using gcc (when using icc Intel has about a 30% advantage). The core is thought to have the following (all cache is 8x): 32kbl1i 32kbl1d 256kbl2 2048 tlb 180 reorder window 8 wide fetch rename 4 uops to the 60 slot scheduler 3 ALUs with 2 overloaded with fp/neon and 1 overloaded for branches 2 load/stores 1 data store
My first thought, who would buy such a machine - I am developer for 30+ years and it has absolutely no value for me.
As for number of cores, I think we going though a silly core war right now. It does not the number of cores that matter - but actually combination of core count and core power. I am sure that box is no where close to a dual 32 x86 style CPU box ( supply your favorite vendor here )
On GeForce 710, well I have a GeForce 740 in my dual Xeon 5160 - 11 year old machine, it is best graphics card I purchase for box.
If you're not doing ARM development, you're not really the target audience. But if you are doing software development, especially development that can benefit from lots of parallel compilation (make -j 64) then this could be really useful.
It been about 8 years - most of that was old pocket pc stuff - it was basically done with Cross Compiler. I guess similar stuff could be done on ARM system - but I still think cross compile is used more often.
For example for Apple iOS development - it is usually doing Apple OS-X
Debugging is much nicer to do on a local system compared to a thing in a rack far away. Sure, you could use an emulator, but given you're targeting servers, emulator performance sucks, especially when you're trying to debug stuff that doesn't reproduce on anything but the target system (like timing issues, for example)
Calling it "much nicer" is too kind. Remote debugging is a pain in the butt, especially for low-level stuff. You need all sorts of infrastructure: a "smart" power strip to do hard remote reboots, a second machine to receive serial console output, etc, etc.
With a "dev box" like this in your office, you can manually force a reboot with your bare hands. And you can opt out of the serial console if you're willing to turn your head and look at the video output of the "dev box". Also, if you're working on a device driver, you really just need physical access at the end of the day.
I've done it with small ARM devkits in the past, and since I had all the necessary infra already setup (besides a remote power switch) it was quite nice. Plus, since the rack was right at home, if I ever needed to go look at das blinkenlights, it was completely fine to do that too.
Being in the other room is a far cry fromin the DC though :P
Right, and a specific kind of ARM development too: People that are planning on creating or supporting large ARM server deployments, and they want a "quiet" version of the rack mount hardware in their office for testing/debugging.
Why not GT710? Because Nvidia does not support free (aka open-source) software, and all the free drivers there are for Nvidia are thanks to reverse engineering (note that the proprietary Nvidia drivers for Linux do not work on ARM). By contrast, AMD has been supporting free software by providing hardware info, and by writing free Linux drivers themselves for many years. So when selecting a graphics card for our new servers last year, we picked the Radeon R5 230, and that has worked nicely.
Linux for Tegra, now Vibrante are nV-supplied Linux on ARMv8 distros for their Tegra platforms. Amongst the various bits included, there are official, Linux-compatible ARMv8 drivers included. In addition to that, nV currently ships a Linux 32bit ARM (ARMv7, I suspect) officially from nvidia.com.
Going from there, I'd say it's just a matter of consumer demand before there's a matching official ARMv8 generic Linux driver for it. Assuming their new open-source efforts don't just actually happen and make it all pointless.
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deepblue08 - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Is this what Neo uses?stanleyipkiss - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
GeForce 710 ?jordanclock - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Sure. Why not? It just needs some basic video output and those cards are dirt-cheap with fine Linux support.eSyr - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Not really, it should work perfectly fine with output via serial.tuxRoller - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
The ast2500 includes a well supported (Linux & Windows) vga controller.HStewart - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
My guess it because the bus on it will not allow higher end boards - I have Xeon 5160 and highest GPU card I can go with is GeForce 740 PCIe.MrSpadge - Thursday, March 29, 2018 - link
You can fit any current PCIe 3 card into even PCIe 1 slots, as long as it physically matches.Elstar - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Is it just me, or did they merely retrofit their rack mount motherboard into a desktop case?jordanclock - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Appears that way, which makes sense for a dev platform. Why spend the resources on building a new mobo and all when you can just make some small changes and put it on its side?mode_13h - Wednesday, March 28, 2018 - link
Disappointing. I was really expecting ARM-based PCs to be a thing, by now.ZeDestructor - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Yes.. desktop case....That case is a 4U (?.. could be 5U) rackmount case (complete with PCIe riser and everything!) with a lid and some feet. Get the right rails and you can rackmount it just fine
tipoo - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Do we know much about the ThunderX2? How wide, how pipelined, cache, etc?That's some hefty cooling for an ARM part, but with 32 cores maybe each core isn't that extraordinary on its own?
I'd love for this to be dug into!
Kevin G - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
It isn't just a massive amount of cores but IO has significantly scaled upward compared to the mobile ARM parts.tuxRoller - Wednesday, April 4, 2018 - link
There's been a little data here and there.https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/11/13/arm-benchm...
https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/11/27/cavium-tru...
On spec2017, the 32 core thunderx is as fast as the xeon 6148 (20 cores) when they're both using gcc (when using icc Intel has about a 30% advantage).
The core is thought to have the following (all cache is 8x):
32kbl1i
32kbl1d
256kbl2
2048 tlb
180 reorder window
8 wide fetch
rename 4 uops to the 60 slot scheduler
3 ALUs with 2 overloaded with fp/neon and 1 overloaded for branches
2 load/stores
1 data store
HStewart - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
My first thought, who would buy such a machine - I am developer for 30+ years and it has absolutely no value for me.As for number of cores, I think we going though a silly core war right now. It does not the number of cores that matter - but actually combination of core count and core power. I am sure that box is no where close to a dual 32 x86 style CPU box ( supply your favorite vendor here )
On GeForce 710, well I have a GeForce 740 in my dual Xeon 5160 - 11 year old machine, it is best graphics card I purchase for box.
vanilla_gorilla - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
If you're not doing ARM development, you're not really the target audience. But if you are doing software development, especially development that can benefit from lots of parallel compilation (make -j 64) then this could be really useful.HStewart - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
It been about 8 years - most of that was old pocket pc stuff - it was basically done with Cross Compiler. I guess similar stuff could be done on ARM system - but I still think cross compile is used more often.For example for Apple iOS development - it is usually doing Apple OS-X
ZeDestructor - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Debugging is much nicer to do on a local system compared to a thing in a rack far away. Sure, you could use an emulator, but given you're targeting servers, emulator performance sucks, especially when you're trying to debug stuff that doesn't reproduce on anything but the target system (like timing issues, for example)Elstar - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Calling it "much nicer" is too kind. Remote debugging is a pain in the butt, especially for low-level stuff. You need all sorts of infrastructure: a "smart" power strip to do hard remote reboots, a second machine to receive serial console output, etc, etc.With a "dev box" like this in your office, you can manually force a reboot with your bare hands. And you can opt out of the serial console if you're willing to turn your head and look at the video output of the "dev box". Also, if you're working on a device driver, you really just need physical access at the end of the day.
ZeDestructor - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
I've done it with small ARM devkits in the past, and since I had all the necessary infra already setup (besides a remote power switch) it was quite nice. Plus, since the rack was right at home, if I ever needed to go look at das blinkenlights, it was completely fine to do that too.Being in the other room is a far cry fromin the DC though :P
Elstar - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Right, and a specific kind of ARM development too: People that are planning on creating or supporting large ARM server deployments, and they want a "quiet" version of the rack mount hardware in their office for testing/debugging.AntonErtl - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Why not GT710? Because Nvidia does not support free (aka open-source) software, and all the free drivers there are for Nvidia are thanks to reverse engineering (note that the proprietary Nvidia drivers for Linux do not work on ARM). By contrast, AMD has been supporting free software by providing hardware info, and by writing free Linux drivers themselves for many years. So when selecting a graphics card for our new servers last year, we picked the Radeon R5 230, and that has worked nicely.ZeDestructor - Tuesday, March 27, 2018 - link
Linux for Tegra, now Vibrante are nV-supplied Linux on ARMv8 distros for their Tegra platforms. Amongst the various bits included, there are official, Linux-compatible ARMv8 drivers included. In addition to that, nV currently ships a Linux 32bit ARM (ARMv7, I suspect) officially from nvidia.com.Going from there, I'd say it's just a matter of consumer demand before there's a matching official ARMv8 generic Linux driver for it. Assuming their new open-source efforts don't just actually happen and make it all pointless.