News Ampere's 128-core CPU works with a motherboard the size of a dinner plate — ASRock's deep micro-ATX is also available with bundled 64-core CPU for...

[Admin]

$1,500 is all you need to get an ASRock motherboard and one of Ampere's 64-core Altra Q64-22.

Ampere's 128-core CPU works with a motherboard the size of a dinner plate — ASRock's deep micro-ATX is also available with bundled 64-core CPU for... : Read more

 

[HaninTH]

"cloud workloads".... what does that even mean?

Can these things do OS virtualization? Do you need ARM to do AI work?

 

[bit_user]

Neat, but kinda meh. Lacks competitive single-threaded performance, so you'd better have some heavily-threaded stuff to run on it. Could make a decent CI (Continuous Integration) platform, for people targeting ARM.

It has a server version of the same core in Raspberry Pi 5. So, you could think of the 64-core version as 16x Pi 5's. At $1500, the price is pretty much in line with that.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

I can think of many great use cases for this. 64 cores, 256GB RAM, 4TB storage could be broken down into 16 quad core, 16GB RAM, 240GB storage VMs. Equip each one with a user friendly Linux distro (like Mint) and you have a very budget friendly setup for a library, community center, school, or any other use case where cost effective office use computers would be more than sufficient. Even if the final setup cost $5000 it's under $325 a VM.

 

[bit_user]

64 cores, 256GB RAM, 4TB storage could be broken down into 16 quad core, 16GB RAM, 240GB storage VMs. Equip each one with a user friendly Linux distro (like Mint) and you have a very budget friendly setup for a library, community center, school, or any other use case where cost effective office use computers would be more than sufficient. Even if the final setup cost $5000 it's under $325 a VM.

But they would have to be used via a remote terminal device, and those thin clients would be running something, right? It'd be cheaper just to get quad core Alder Lake-N mini PCs for each terminal.

 

[ezst036]

But they would have to be used via a remote terminal device, and those thin clients would be running something, right? It'd be cheaper just to get quad core Alder Lake-N mini PCs for each terminal.

Why do you say that?

The motherboard has four pci-e slots in the photo(?), so it only needs four skinny video cards and each one could be set to a seat and used direct without remote terminals. four dedicated usb hubs would keep things relatively simple as well.

Windows does not support multiseat because Microsoft wants to sell OS licenses, but multiseat is standard functionality built into most Linux distros.

 

[bit_user]

multiseat is standard functionality built into most Linux distros.

If you say so. I'd have no idea how to configure independent X11/Wayland logins on different screens and tied to different USB devices.

Text logins, over serial connections? Sure. Now we're talking old school!

 

[ezst036]

If you say so. I'd have no idea how to configure independent X11/Wayland logins on different screens and tied to different USB devices.

Text logins, over serial connections? Sure. Now we're talking old school!

Full independent GUIs as if its multiple computers.

View: https://youtu.be/pfi9VOAA4vk?si=vCD7UvZKAwbBP9_e


It is as modern as can be, you can even mix DEs, such as one user XFCE, another uses GNOME.

 

[bit_user]

It is as modern as can be, you can even mix DEs, such as one user XFCE, another uses GNOME.

That's a given. If they had to run the same window manager, then they wouldn't be truly independent. For security, reasons, you want all of the processes to be independent of anything the other users are running.