4 ms·

Does anyone know the price of these cards? Trying this out in a home setup would be extremely awesome, but most likely prohibitively expensive.

Nextgrid 4y ago
Mikrotik has a budget equivalent: https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_2xs_pcie https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_2xs_pcie It's nowhere near the Nvidia one, but it does have hardware acceleration for network-related tasks so if you're looking to offload networking/packet filtering/etc, it will do the job perfectly.
- Sebb767 4y ago
  Thanks a lot!
aseipp 4y ago
A retail Bluefield-2 you can get for anywhere from $1.5k-to-$2k USD from a variety of online sellers; just look it up, there are a couple SKUs. You can pick up a second-hand off eBay for about $1k USD right now. It's pretty pricey no matter how you slice it. The real question with a second-hand version is if you get access to the software or not; AFAIK neither Nvidia nor Mellanox have been too stingy about this stuff in the past I think (outside of some EULAs), but who knows... Also JFYI, all of the Bluefield SKUs are passively cooled, so they normally aren't a great fit for a homelab due to the airflow requirements...
- bf-eater 4y ago
  You have to create an account to get at the OS images, but they don't require any proof of purchase to download things. The boards I have came with an Ubuntu image, but I've downloaded updated images from their site and flashed them. They also have RHEL, and some containers that are supposed to help you build your own images.
bf-eater 4y ago
They're expensive. I think the high-end BF2 cards I use at work (2x100Gbps Eth/IB) were about $2.2k, and 25Gb/s go for $1.1k. Nvidia's store says the msrp is more like $3.5k. Make sure you read the power/cooling requirements. I wouldn't use these in something that isn't rack mounted and can push a lot of air over them.

4 ms·

Does anyone know the price of these cards? Trying this out in a home setup would be extremely awesome, but most likely prohibitively expensive.

by Sebb767 4y ago

Nextgrid 4y ago
Mikrotik has a budget equivalent: https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_2xs_pcie https://mikrotik.com/product/ccr2004_1g_2xs_pcie It's nowhere near the Nvidia one, but it does have hardware acceleration for network-related tasks so if you're looking to offload networking/packet filtering/etc, it will do the job perfectly.
- Sebb767 4y ago
  Thanks a lot!
aseipp 4y ago
A retail Bluefield-2 you can get for anywhere from $1.5k-to-$2k USD from a variety of online sellers; just look it up, there are a couple SKUs. You can pick up a second-hand off eBay for about $1k USD right now. It's pretty pricey no matter how you slice it. The real question with a second-hand version is if you get access to the software or not; AFAIK neither Nvidia nor Mellanox have been too stingy about this stuff in the past I think (outside of some EULAs), but who knows... Also JFYI, all of the Bluefield SKUs are passively cooled, so they normally aren't a great fit for a homelab due to the airflow requirements...
- bf-eater 4y ago
  You have to create an account to get at the OS images, but they don't require any proof of purchase to download things. The boards I have came with an Ubuntu image, but I've downloaded updated images from their site and flashed them. They also have RHEL, and some containers that are supposed to help you build your own images.
bf-eater 4y ago
They're expensive. I think the high-end BF2 cards I use at work (2x100Gbps Eth/IB) were about $2.2k, and 25Gb/s go for $1.1k. Nvidia's store says the msrp is more like $3.5k. Make sure you read the power/cooling requirements. I wouldn't use these in something that isn't rack mounted and can push a lot of air over them.