4 ms·

My software "stack" hasn't changed in maybe 15 years now. It's emacs + firefox + terminal and a couple utilities here and there. It ran fine on my first compute

by simias 8y ago

My software "stack" hasn't changed in maybe 15 years now. It's emacs + firefox + terminal and a couple utilities here and there. It ran fine on my first computer with a single core ~1GHz CPU and 128MB of RAM (although multi-core architectures and more RAM did make it a lot easier to multi-task later). The only reason I upgrade my computer these days is to run modern games, for everything else except compilation I could probably use a computer from 10 years ago and not feel the difference. I'd gladly switch to a completely open source hardware architecture even if it meant losing a significant amount of raw performance provided that the hardware and OS are stable and it's not prohibitively expensive.

noir_lord 8y ago
That sounds nice actually. I'm currently dealing with our legacy system which means I have multiple virtualised systems running in a replica of our production system. Currently using ~25 gig of RAM just to run the environments and an IDE.
kilburn 8y ago
I don't know what "prohibitvely expensive" is in your case, but there's a possibility today: Grab one HiFive Unleashed for $999 [1]: - 4 cores up to 1.5Ghz - 8Gb DDR4 ECC Ram - 1Gbps ethernet Then grab one HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board for $1,999 [2]: - SSD M.2 Connector - SATA3 Connector - x16 PCIE Connector (4 lanes of pcie2) - A bunch of other cool stuff you wouldn't probably use (SPI, FPGA, etc.) Finally grab some M.2 Drive and a graphics card ($500 maybe?). This would set you back a grand total of $3500, which is definitely way more expensive than the current mainstream but may fit within "non-prohibitively expensive" for some. The whole platform should be open source [3]. [1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unleashed https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unleashed [2] https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expansion-board https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expan... [3] https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive-unleashed/ https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive-unleashed/
- dtx1 8y ago
  While the hifive is an awesome proof of concept 3,5 k$ for essentially something performing roughly as well as a raspberry pi seems prohibitively expensive for now.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Seems worth it. My issue would be paying all that, and then strapping closed source hardware to it.

by simias 8y ago

noir_lord 8y ago

That sounds nice actually. I'm currently dealing with our legacy system which means I have multiple virtualised systems running in a replica of our production system. Currently using ~25 gig of RAM just to run the environments and an IDE.

kilburn 8y ago

I don't know what "prohibitvely expensive" is in your case, but there's a possibility today: Grab one HiFive Unleashed for $999 [1]: - 4 cores up to 1.5Ghz - 8Gb DDR4 ECC Ram - 1Gbps ethernet Then grab one HiFive Unleashed Expansion Board for $1,999 [2]: - SSD M.2 Connector - SATA3 Connector - x16 PCIE Connector (4 lanes of pcie2) - A bunch of other cool stuff you wouldn't probably use (SPI, FPGA, etc.) Finally grab some M.2 Drive and a graphics card ($500 maybe?). This would set you back a grand total of $3500, which is definitely way more expensive than the current mainstream but may fit within "non-prohibitively expensive" for some. The whole platform should be open source [3]. [1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unleashed https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive-unleashed [2] https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expansion-board https://www.crowdsupply.com/microsemi/hifive-unleashed-expan... [3] https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive-unleashed/ https://www.sifive.com/products/hifive-unleashed/

dtx1 8y ago
While the hifive is an awesome proof of concept 3,5 k$ for essentially something performing roughly as well as a raspberry pi seems prohibitively expensive for now.
- acct1771 8y ago
  Seems worth it. My issue would be paying all that, and then strapping closed source hardware to it.