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I’d really like to have a capable Arm 64 workstation. Unfortunately there aren’t many options — and this one really doesn’t tickle my fancy. I’ve been looking
by qubex 6y ago
I’d really like to have a capable Arm 64 workstation. Unfortunately there aren’t many options — and this one really doesn’t tickle my fancy.
I’ve been looking into Nvidia’s Xavier NX of late but, of course, it’s not an SBSA-compliant system, leaving the user totally at the mercy of the producer (Nvidia, in this case, as is indeed tangentially mentioned by the article itself).
Whenever I mention this people usually throw in irrelevant statements such as picking up a Raspberry Pi 4 (of which I have a couple) or another SBC, but really I’m looking for something which offers PCIe and all the creature comforts (even the HoneyComb LX2K lacks PCIe beyond a single M.2 slot for the SSD and offers no wireless capabilities unless you add a USB3 dongle).
Is there a reason why somebody hasn’t (oh, I don’t know) thrown a Snapdragon 8cx on a board with some of these accoutrements and provided it in a mini-ATX form-factor?
- rubatuga 6y agoCheck out developerbox. https://www.96boards.org/product/developerbox/ https://www.96boards.org/product/developerbox/
- StillBored 6y agoWhich is an even worse option vs the emag. The 1Ghz A53's in that thing make single threaded perf of the emag look look like a speed demon. The honeycomb (or even the mcbin) are better choices if you just want a PCIe slot.
- rubatuga 6y agoAt least it's not vulnerable to spectre
- qubex 6y agoDoesn’t seem very impressive. Thanks for the suggestion though, I had never seen this machine before.
- rjsw 6y agoThe HoneyComb LX2K has an 8x PCIe slot as well, what else would you need ? I wouldn't want wireless on it anyway, just use ethernet.
- qubex 6y agoHehe... the great thing of bringing up a requirement on Hacker News is that one will always find somebody whose instant reaction is “you don’t need that [because I don’t need it]”. For various reasons it’s something I want. Do I need it? No, I don’t... but then again none of us really need anything beyond oxygen, hydration, and caloric sludge. Let’s put it this way: given my predicament (locked down in a building that only has WiFi) a wireless solution is pretty much required. As for the PCIe... the 8x slot clearly is required for a graphics card. I have several other peripherals (an SDR and an FPGA card) that would be homeless.
- StillBored 6y agoThis! times 100. It seems common that these ARM boards vendors are like "here is your pcie slot" and then fail to provide all the basic peripherals onboard that make mITX work on x86. Or for that matter just provide a couple slots on a mATX board. AKA, if the board is missing something fundamental (like graphics, sata, or even USB!) then the board is useless for a lot of cases which require both the missing bits + some other PCIe board. Its the same thing with soldered on RAM, 4G should be enough for everyone! Its quite silly in many regards too, since adding a few $$ to the BOM for a graphics chip/usb/networking/whatever to bring it up to feature parity with $120 boards from asus/etc never seems to cross their minds.
- Klinky 6y agoI would suggest you go make your own board then. Adding DIMM slots is not trivial, and then you have to worry about compatibility with third-party RAM. There is something to be said about a wholly-integrated solution. It's more manageable from the manufacturer's point of view. Flexibility adds complexity and uncontrollable variables, which is not what you want in a product priced at the low end. It's not always the BOM that costs you, instead it's the additional testing, validation & support.
- rbanffy 6y agoIndeed. At this price, I'd think a beefy x86 or a totally Windows-proof POWER9 would make more sense.
- ac29 6y ago> Is there a reason why somebody hasn’t (oh, I don’t know) thrown a Snapdragon 8cx on a board with some of these accoutrements and provided it in a mini-ATX form-factor? Because there is no profitable market for it. The number of people who would be willing to pay the $1000+ that it would cost to produce a board like that in low volume just aren't there, in part since you could build a dramatically more powerful x86 machine for less money.
- StillBored 6y agoWhich is the vicious cycle. Design a board using a phone or networking chip for a production run of 1000, then the value is going to be worse than a commodity part. Which means no one is going to buy them. If the phone/networking chip were designed upfront to to be less cost optimized for its target market (say putting graphics on a networking chip, or more PCIe lanes on a phone soc) that would help. As would assuming your going to sell 100k of them, and assuring the design and pricing is competitive with a $300 x86 motherboard+cpu combination. The honeycomb could be a good board, but its obvious they have designed it for some target market that isn't actually a generic mITX board. The CEX, and x4 SFP cages add cost, but little value vs a desktop board so you have a board that costs $800 and competes poorly with $150 AMD boards that take AM4 processors unless you happen to need 4 ports of 10G ethernet. The honeycomb minus all the networking junk would be selling in the hundreds of thousands of units if it were $100 to $250. The rpi doesn't sell millions of units because its good, its sells that many because its $50. So really the "flaw" is all the extreme upfront cost cutting to create a product that is laser focused at a single big fish customer, then failing to provide a generic and flexible version for the open market that can be customized less expensively.
- hyperpallium 6y agoClash of ecosystems? At interfaces: ARM is far more customizable than x86 - but on chip. And at targets: ecosystem revolves around low-power. e.g. (21 TOPS) Xavier NX is for devices "constrained by size, weight, and power budgets."