8 ms·

This is something I don't understand with any cpu manufacturer which isn't x86. Why don't the manufacturers offer standard pc motherboards tweaked for their cor

• vertex-four 10y ago
  It's not necessarily cheap to provide and support a full desktop system, especially given the very small minority of people who might actually be interested in it.
• drewg123 10y ago
  +1 to that. I feel his pain, having been there myself. Back when DEC Alpha CPUs were still a going concern, I was one of the maintainers of the FreeBSD/alpha port. While DEC shipped their workstations, they were beyond the reach of OSS developers. The first "normal" Alpha board was the API UP1000. It was basically an Alpha 21264 on an AMD motherboard & it was totally awesome. API shipped me one before they were generally available so I could get FreeBSD working on it. I used it as my desktop (running FreeBSD/alpha) for years. Sadly all things Alpha were killed off in favor of Itanium. Here is the best description I can find of it in ~30 seconds of googling: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/API+Announces+Program+to+Encourage+ISVs+And+IHVs+To+Develop+Alpha...-a059124753 http://www.thefreelibrary.com/API+Announces+Program+to+Encou...
  • danieldk 10y ago
    I fondly remember getting an AXP-PCI 33 board as a teenager, which were (at some point) really affordable [1]. It was my first non-x86 machine. [1] http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/mds-199909/cd1/alpha/axpcidgc.pdf http://manx.classiccmp.org/collections/mds-199909/cd1/alpha/...
  • salem 10y ago
    There were loads of DEC multia workstations selling cheap at some point. But even those where a pain to get booting into linux of FreeBSD.
  • nickpsecurity 10y ago
    "API shipped me one before they were generally available so I could get FreeBSD working on it. " I didn't know about that. That's pretty neat. One of Alpha's main advantages was PALcode. It was close to microcode's advantages but with only assembly knowledge required. Did you or other FreeBSD developers ever do anything cool with it? And what? Typing in the domain of that company today shows how sad the IT market works when incredible products are involved that aren't market leaders: http://www.alpha-processor.com/ http://www.alpha-processor.com/
  • kjs3 10y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean by "normal", but DEC and a bunch of OEMs were shipping Baby-AT AlphaPC64 and ATX AlphaPC164 boards long before the 21264 shipped. The even used commodity memory and had ISA/PCI slots. I had both, and they were relatively affordable.
• rjsw 10y ago
  There was a motherboard for the StrongARM SA110 CPU, I still have one. Fits in a standard PC case, takes PCI expansion cards, connectors for IDE etc. in the standard places. Sun made a Sparc motherboard too but I don't know how easy it was to buy one.
  • davidgerard 10y ago
    The Ultra 5 and Ultra 10 were basically PCs with SPARC chips.
  • hapless 10y ago
    Sun's "SME" division sold the Ultra AXi and AXMP boards, which were 100% standard ATX boards with PCI slots.
  • Create 10y ago
    31 Oct 2015 Titanium AM5728 Mini-DTX Four 3Gbps SATA connections Two PCI Express root complexes http://www.ti.com/devnet/docs/catalog/thirdpartydevtoolfolder.tsp?actionPerformed=productFolder&productId=24320 http://www.ti.com/devnet/docs/catalog/thirdpartydevtoolfolde...
    • i336_ 10y ago
      Huh, that actually looks standard. Approx $590. I can't get a clear idea if this is 64-bit or not though. Also, with this board, I don't see anywhere obvious to bolt a heatsink - and at 1.1GHz, I'd be be reluctant to do overnight compiles on the thing.
      • kristianp 10y ago
        Looks like it uses two Cortex A15s, which is 32 bit. http://shop.elesar.co.uk/image/data/brief-ti22.pdf http://shop.elesar.co.uk/image/data/brief-ti22.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A15
• haikuginger 10y ago
  > Why don't the manufacturers offer standard pc motherboards tweaked for their corresponding cpu? Because there's no standard interface. Each SoC has its own set of pins, which changes every generation for every manufacturer. Each board would essentially have to be redesigned for each CPU, meaning that the idea of having a separate "motherboard" would be completely pointless, as it'd be totally coupled to the CPU. You could have motherboards with pre-soldered, rather than socketed, SoCs, but then again, manufacturers would essentially have to put as much work into each revision of those as they would into a true PC motherboard that has a much broader audience. The economics just don't work out.
  • rjsw 10y ago
    My old StrongARM motherboard has the CPU soldered in place. Most current SoCs don't have a PCI bus so there isn't very much you would be able to add on. A manufacturer could provide one or two SODIMM sockets instead of soldering DRAM onto the board though.
• api 10y ago
  Hardware companies are really really traditional in their business thinking and do not understand virality or 'priming the pump' at all. They do a straight-up market size analysis, conclude that the (current) market is small, and move on.
  • cmrdporcupine 10y ago
    Their margins are low, and it's super expensive to tool up a factory, so they are (intelligently) going to be somewhat risk adverse.
• chrsw 10y ago
  I assume people aren't making non-x86 desktop or workstation systems because they cost a lot of money to develop, even just a motherboard. If the system cannot run Windows, you've just made the whole idea economically infeasible.
  • jasonkostempski 10y ago
    So that's what all that Windows RT stuff was about. I'm a bit ashamed I didn't realize Windows (proper) doesn't run on ARM. I'm assuming MS really wants to be able to run Windows on different types of processors but can't practically make that happen and keep backwards compatibility. It sounds like they've shot themselves in the foot. Unfortunately, they were stepping on all our heads at the same time.
    • scholia 10y ago
      Windows NT was written to be cross-platform, and it was actually developed on RISC chips -- hence the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer). Unlike Linux, it wasn't written on and for an x86 processor.... At one time, commercial Windows NT PCs were sold with DEC Alpha processors. However, the volume of x86 PC sales drives huge economies of scale that make it hard for other platforms. This actually benefited Linux in particular, but it also encouraged Apple switch from its own hardware to PC-based x86 hardware, which resulted in cheaper Macs. Microsoft has never developed an OS specifically for Intel x86 chips (ie Windows NT and CE: the basis for DOS was bought in) to try to avoid being wholly dependent on Intel. Intel has also supported alternative operating systems to avoid being wholly dependent on Microsoft. But neither is immune from market forces.
      • subway 10y ago
        I still have an old NT 4(?) install disc with x86, MIPS, Alpha, and PPC arches.
        • coredog64 10y ago
          NT4 was the last to support MIPS & PPC, but only x86 and Alpha got SP3 and beyond. Digital/Compaq did have a beta build of Win2k for Alpha, but the plug got pulled right before the RTM.
• microcolonel 10y ago
  RISC-V might have this edge if a manufacturer picks it up. Maybe the SiFive folks are listening. I'd definitely be interested in running a system like that, if it had PCIe ports to run a supported GPU, perhaps a fancy NIC or a RAID card. If they would make a PC-format RISC-V board with standard attachments, I would buy several in an instant. Though I know it's not free to license all of those bits, this being a major expense on x86 boards.
• tiatia 10y ago
  They were available in Germany mit 90ies. Nobody bought them. Vobis Highscreen Alpha 5000, based on alpha processor 21164PC
• runeks 10y ago
  I think the cold truth is that if they did, the non-x86 system would cost almost as much as an x86 system, and would perform worse. When you add more ports, connectors, RAM sockets, CPU socket etc., the cost of the CPU starts to becomes relatively unimportant. A cheap x86 Celeron, which is as fast, if not faster, than an ARM CPU, will only add a small percentage to your budget. And even a decent i3 won't cost that much more either, percentage-wise. This why we only see Raspberry Pi-esque devices, I believe. ARM CPUs excel in the embedded space, which is not surprising since this is where they grew up. Their qualities are low cost and low absolute power usage (as opposed to performance per watt). This doesn't make sense for desktop systems.
  • _ph_ 10y ago
    There were times, when such a system might have outperformed x86 hardware (Sparc, Power). And even if not strictly competetive, people who care about writing low level software should be delighted working on something different than x86. I certainly would like to work on an Arm64 system, ideally with 8+ cores. That should be quite interesting.
  • Spooky23 10y ago
    The only thing really missing for many use cases is a better storage interface. The rest is gravy.
    • paulmd 10y ago
      There are several single-board computers with various permutations of USB 3.0, GbE, SATA, mSATA, miniPCIe, etc. Check out the ODroid series, Banana Pi Pro, ECS Liva, Jetson TK-1, etc. While I have to acknowledge the RPi's pioneering contributions to the ultra-cheap SBC market, I find it immensely frustrating that it sucks up all of the oxygen on this topic. There are many, many other options at this point and many of them are better choices for the typical "mini Linux server" or "low-power desktop system" use-case.
      • wolfgke 10y ago
        > Check out the ODroid series, Banana Pi Pro, ECS Liva, Jetson TK-1, etc. For which of these do regular updates (in particular kernel updates) from the mainline distribution exist?
• Nelson69 10y ago
  Chicken and egg. It costs more than you think, for probably fewer geeks than you think. ARM seems really well positioned, if there has ever been something to square off with Intel, it's ARM, you can get cheap SoCs and play with them. The software ecosystem is growing so maybe someone will throw down and be willing to put together a full ATX system, I suspect it will cost more and perform less than an Intel based product though.
• TickleSteve 10y ago
  Quite simple.... there is no market for them. There is a commodity PC market. There isn't a commodity ARM motherboard market as the type of devices ARMs go into aren't PC's, they're devices. Yes... there is a hobbyist market. But that isn't worth investing in.
  • wolfgke 10y ago
    > Yes... there is a hobbyist market. But that isn't worth investing in. The home computer market was originally a hobbyist market.
• chocolatebunny 10y ago
  Something like this: http://b2b.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5422#ov http://b2b.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5422#... ?
  • chx 10y ago
    That's the $1000+ server market. In Germany it sells for 850 EUR : http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/gigabyte-mp30-ar0-9mp30ar0mr-00-a1297380.html http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/gigabyte-mp30-ar0-9mp30ar...
  • i336_ 10y ago
    That's perfect in every way except price. The CPU is 2.4GHz and 8 cores. It can handle 64GB ECC DDR3. It has onboard VGA since GPU support (which typically involves x86-specific initialization instructions at boot time) will be spotty. Remote management (dedicated NIC) w/ iKVM and VGA. 4xSATA3 2x 10G SFP What's not so good: only USB 2.0 - two external ports and one header. Not sure how many root hubs and what goes where. That said, you can use eg a USB3 HDD (or do almost anything else involving USB3) via the 20Gbit Ethernet to another box, so...
• trhway 10y ago
  >I think, many Linux enthusiasts would be thrilled to run an alternative CPU platform. forget Linux enthusiasts. Whole countries, like Russia or China, have national security interest in it - beside everything else, Intel chips has VNC server built-in on the silicon :). China has been making great progress in building its national computing platform, though not sure whether it has reached the desktops of their government employees. Wrt. Russia - it again lifted the ban on buying foreign hardware for security services, time to upgrade has come again i guess :) I mean, even such guaranteed markets and money available is still not enough to even come close to Intel.
  • maximilianburke 10y ago
    VNC on silicon? Do you have sources for that?
    • devereaux 10y ago
      It has different names. AMT is one of the earliest implementations. There is a separate chip with its own OS, connecting to the video chip and the nic. No driver needed. Can not be permanently removed.
    • paulmd 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro#VNC-based_KVM_remote_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_vPro#VNC-based_KVM_remot...
    • vetrom 10y ago
      http://www.meshcommander.com/meshcommander http://www.meshcommander.com/meshcommander as a client to the Intel AMT and maybe ME, which if you do some more research, you'll see is indeliby baked into most newer Intel hardware.
  • snaky 10y ago
    Russia seems to be not very interested in ARM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal_CPU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal_CPU
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• bsder 10y ago
  > Why don't the manufacturers offer standard pc motherboards tweaked for their corresponding cpu? No expertise and x86 is baked deeply into PC's. 1) No Expertise ARM manufacturers tend to synthesize logic a lot. They don't tend to pull out circuit simulators and design things by hand. As such, the advanced techniques behind fast memory, CPU and graphics interfaces simply aren't there. 2) x86 is baked into PC's People forget that there is a lot of "initialization"-type code on things that plug into buses. ALL of that code is x86. The Alpha PC's had to include emulators for x86 at boot time in order to init the old PCI cards.
• tracker1 10y ago
  I'd settle for a standard power/backplate, maybe about 0.6x the size of the PC backplate that's used from ITX through ATX boards... then have the MB size be that, squared... which is bigger than most enthusiast devices (rpi and similar). Something with a fairly standard mounting interface, and power adapter would be a good start. From there, a standard interface for booting and mounting the OS and additional devices. There'd be a lot of work in that, and a lot of competition, but would be nice to see some work in the open for a more standard platform for ARM devices.
• nickpsecurity 10y ago
  The Amiga people kept getting new PPC's built for their systems. Almost nobody bought them. Gaisler open-sourced his Leon3 SPARC CPU and I.P. under GPL. Sun did same for OpenSPARC T1 & T2. Nobody built anything or pooled together money. MIPS and ARM stayed in embedded space mostly with big vendors (esp SGI) switching to Intel/AMD since they performed better per dollar. That along with licensing cost meant nobody was doing a desktop CPU there since it be a financial sinkhold. I still think Cavium's Octeon III and ThunderX could become great desktops with a PC board. Yet, they show no interest in that outside cloud servers maybe. PA-RISC and Alpha similarly died since no demand to pay for increasing expense on CPU's. SuperH, which powered Dreamcast, stayed in embedded with higher-end one doing multimedia products. So, not only are there no desktops, everyone that tried either sold jack and/or went out of business. Your theory hasn't been true for a long time. Linux and FOSS types talk a lot but buy very little if it's not x86. A desktop could easily be made in Shenzen or whatever based on existing components, esp Leon3 or Leon4 SOC. eASIC's mask-programmed tech already supports Leon to crank them out quick and cheap. Peripherals could be handled with cheap microcontrollers if necessary that have onboard HW accelerators for them. The tech is there just no suppliers right now and usually no actual buyers.