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I'm in market to replace platform for my home-built NAS. I'm looking at EPYCs 7001 or 7002 with SuperMicro platform (second hand) as primary target. When I see

I'm in market to replace platform for my home-built NAS. I'm looking at EPYCs 7001 or 7002 with SuperMicro platform (second hand) as primary target. When I seen this Milk-V Pioneer platform I was very enthusiastic: looks like what I need (minus IPMI, but I can omit this requirement) - one slot for 10G network, one slot for HBA, M.2 slots for caches, I can select RAM (in opposite to most of these platforms, where RAM is soledrid-on), plus ability to experiment with new platform. Looks perfect. But... $1499?! Plus VAT to import to Europe?! Sorry. I pass :-( Why does it cost SO MUCH!?

rwmj 3y ago
Because it's a development platform, produced in small quantities. It also has 64 cores which I guess an EPYC doesn't have at that kind of price.
- blacklion 3y ago
  On one hand I agree with you. It is apples-to-oranges to compare new development platform and old, second-hand, production one. On other hand... There is NO comparable production RISC-V platforms. You say "It has 64 cores" - well, it is good argument when there is choice. But there is no choice on RISC-V side, there is no such platform with 32 or 8 or any other number of cores. So, I compare what I can buy with "RISC-V" badge and what I can buy with "amd64" badge. When I choose EPYC I could choose from 8 cores up to 64 cores, according to my wallet and needs. For 1000 euro I could have good, proven MoBo which offers more than this "development platform" (i.e. IPMI and VGA exit, which means I don't need any videocard to occupy so precious PCIe slot - and I think, it is good idea for DEVELOPMENT platform to have full remote control & access, IPMI or some other) and 8 core/16 threads first generation EPYC (which will be faster core-to-core, I'm sure), NEW. If I agree to buy second-hand hardware it will be about 550 euros (same mobo, same CPU). For 1400 euros I will get NEW 16 cores / 32 thread EPYC + mobo combo, or about 700 euros second-hand. Yes, I know, development vs. production, but this situation stays the same for years now. BTW, situation is the same with ARM platforms too - there is no way to buy "big desktop/small-server class" ARMv8 board with good set of expansion slot.
  - brucehoult 3y ago
    Have you checked the cost of a prebuilt 64 core EPYC machine (not just the chip) recently? Sure, it's 4 times the performance, but it's also going to be several times the price. Even a prebuilt 7950X (16 core) machine costs more than the Pioneer, at leas the ones I've found on the net.
    - blacklion 3y ago
      Why should I compare prebuilt machine (which will not exactly what I want, I'm sure) and MoBo with soldered-in CPU? I'm already own good chassis, HBA, 10G network adapter and lot of HDDs :-)
      - rwmj 3y ago
        We get it, you've found an area where a new open architecture (only 12 years old, only been making chips for 5 years) doesn't compete with a 50 year old proprietary architecture that is used by 95%+ of the machines around. It's like it is 1997 and Windows looks unstoppable, what could this silly Linux toy ever be useful for?
        brucehoult 3y ago
        Agreed. Except I really don't think it's fair to call RISC-V 12 (or 13) years old. Sure, that's when some university guys in a pub said "fuck it, we should just make our own ISA" and started throwing ideas around, but it was a long long time before it was frozen and there was something companies could start building on. That happened in July 2019. just over 4 years ago, which I think should be counted as the zero date. When did Arm start working on Aarch64? I don't think we have any idea — as far as I know they've never said. My guess is it was around the 2003 release of AMD64. But the world learned about it when they published the finished ARMv8-A spec in October 2011. If 2011 is the date for ARMv8 then the fair comparable date for RISC-V is 2019. > only been making chips for 5 years Five years ago, the only RISC-V chips were one-off ones made in Berkeley university, and the FE310-G000 and FU540-C000, which were also made by those same guys as were in that pub, manufactured in total volumes of a few hundred, and with no guarantee they would be compatible with the eventual ratified standard.
zahllos 3y ago
Because it won't sell in anywhere near the volumes comparable x86 motherboards will. It's the same for the Talos II using IBM's POWER. It costs a lot because a) it is designed as a workstation and b) the volume just isn't there. Economies of scale basically.
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  As someone who dabbles in electronics, it was eye-opening to go to DigiKey and PCBWay and price up a modern x86 motherboard. Obviously DigiKey doesn't have the chipset ICs, but at quantities of 100 just the connectors, VRMs, passives and the big 8-layer PCB to house it was so much higher. Like I knew it would be higher, but this exercise really put industrialized manufacturing and economy of scale into perspective.
brucehoult 3y ago
Point of fact: it costs no more (maybe less) than a similarly configured prebuilt x86 computer with 12-16 performance cores, which it will be performance-competitive with on many tasks where you can keep most of the 64 cores busy.
snvzz 3y ago
>Why does it cost SO MUCH!? Because it is their first generation chip, thus small production run. You can either wait for the next one (SOPHON SG2044, with V 1.0 extension, TBA 2024) or get something that's mass-produced now, such as SBCs or tablets based on the JH7110 or TH1520 SoCs.

rwmj 3y ago

Because it's a development platform, produced in small quantities. It also has 64 cores which I guess an EPYC doesn't have at that kind of price.

blacklion 3y ago
On one hand I agree with you. It is apples-to-oranges to compare new development platform and old, second-hand, production one. On other hand... There is NO comparable production RISC-V platforms. You say "It has 64 cores" - well, it is good argument when there is choice. But there is no choice on RISC-V side, there is no such platform with 32 or 8 or any other number of cores. So, I compare what I can buy with "RISC-V" badge and what I can buy with "amd64" badge. When I choose EPYC I could choose from 8 cores up to 64 cores, according to my wallet and needs. For 1000 euro I could have good, proven MoBo which offers more than this "development platform" (i.e. IPMI and VGA exit, which means I don't need any videocard to occupy so precious PCIe slot - and I think, it is good idea for DEVELOPMENT platform to have full remote control & access, IPMI or some other) and 8 core/16 threads first generation EPYC (which will be faster core-to-core, I'm sure), NEW. If I agree to buy second-hand hardware it will be about 550 euros (same mobo, same CPU). For 1400 euros I will get NEW 16 cores / 32 thread EPYC + mobo combo, or about 700 euros second-hand. Yes, I know, development vs. production, but this situation stays the same for years now. BTW, situation is the same with ARM platforms too - there is no way to buy "big desktop/small-server class" ARMv8 board with good set of expansion slot.
- brucehoult 3y ago
  Have you checked the cost of a prebuilt 64 core EPYC machine (not just the chip) recently? Sure, it's 4 times the performance, but it's also going to be several times the price. Even a prebuilt 7950X (16 core) machine costs more than the Pioneer, at leas the ones I've found on the net.
  - blacklion 3y ago
    Why should I compare prebuilt machine (which will not exactly what I want, I'm sure) and MoBo with soldered-in CPU? I'm already own good chassis, HBA, 10G network adapter and lot of HDDs :-)
    - rwmj 3y ago
      We get it, you've found an area where a new open architecture (only 12 years old, only been making chips for 5 years) doesn't compete with a 50 year old proprietary architecture that is used by 95%+ of the machines around. It's like it is 1997 and Windows looks unstoppable, what could this silly Linux toy ever be useful for?
      - brucehoult 3y ago
        Agreed. Except I really don't think it's fair to call RISC-V 12 (or 13) years old. Sure, that's when some university guys in a pub said "fuck it, we should just make our own ISA" and started throwing ideas around, but it was a long long time before it was frozen and there was something companies could start building on. That happened in July 2019. just over 4 years ago, which I think should be counted as the zero date. When did Arm start working on Aarch64? I don't think we have any idea — as far as I know they've never said. My guess is it was around the 2003 release of AMD64. But the world learned about it when they published the finished ARMv8-A spec in October 2011. If 2011 is the date for ARMv8 then the fair comparable date for RISC-V is 2019. > only been making chips for 5 years Five years ago, the only RISC-V chips were one-off ones made in Berkeley university, and the FE310-G000 and FU540-C000, which were also made by those same guys as were in that pub, manufactured in total volumes of a few hundred, and with no guarantee they would be compatible with the eventual ratified standard.

zahllos 3y ago

Because it won't sell in anywhere near the volumes comparable x86 motherboards will. It's the same for the Talos II using IBM's POWER. It costs a lot because a) it is designed as a workstation and b) the volume just isn't there. Economies of scale basically.

magicalhippo 3y ago
As someone who dabbles in electronics, it was eye-opening to go to DigiKey and PCBWay and price up a modern x86 motherboard. Obviously DigiKey doesn't have the chipset ICs, but at quantities of 100 just the connectors, VRMs, passives and the big 8-layer PCB to house it was so much higher. Like I knew it would be higher, but this exercise really put industrialized manufacturing and economy of scale into perspective.

brucehoult 3y ago

Point of fact: it costs no more (maybe less) than a similarly configured prebuilt x86 computer with 12-16 performance cores, which it will be performance-competitive with on many tasks where you can keep most of the 64 cores busy.

snvzz 3y ago

>Why does it cost SO MUCH!? Because it is their first generation chip, thus small production run. You can either wait for the next one (SOPHON SG2044, with V 1.0 extension, TBA 2024) or get something that's mass-produced now, such as SBCs or tablets based on the JH7110 or TH1520 SoCs.