A few years ago I was working at a place that needed to do builds targeting the Jetson platform, and was somewhat allergic to tossing it into the cloud due to cost. We ran the numbers and the Altra paid for itself pretty quickly. Great thing, it ripped through our C++ builds + Docker image creation - I think we ended up with a 64 core version (don't remember through who, but we needed a server form factor). Ended up still moving our release builds to the cloud, due to some dicey internet situations but for local builds this thing was A+. I hope they're still using it.
Sounds good, but also sounds odd that a dicey internet situation caused you to move to the cloud as opposed to local (I guess could be dicey uplink for remote team or similar)
The robots that needed to pull the builds weren't local - they were out on farms and stuff - and even with crappy 3G internet, our upload was still the problem. Comcast was really screwing us.
I haven’t bought new hardware since I was a teenager. Second hand is cheap and good for the environment. I never received a broken part and everything has worked reliably for me.
2-3 years is not a lot. My daily driver laptop is from 2011 and still going strong.
Sure, there are “lemons” out there, but there are also a lot of people who just replace their hardware often.
I work at an e-waste recycling company. People throwing out old but still working servers, desktops, and laptops is pretty common. Companies regularly decommission and throw out their IT assets after some number of years, even if the stuff still works (which most of it still does).
The main failure points in electronics are by far power supply and batteries.
Non-polymer electrolytic capacitors can dry out, but just about all decent modern motherboards use polymer-based since years ago.
My current NAS is my previous desktop, which I bought in 2015. I tended to keep my desktop on 24/7 due to services, and my NAS as well, so it's been running more or less continuously since then. It's on its second PSU but apart from that chugging along.
I've been using older computer parts like this for a long time, and reliability increased markedly after they switched to non-polymer caps.
Modern higher-end GPUs due to their immense power requirements can have components fail, typically in the voltage regulation. Often this can be fixed relatively cheaply.
If buying a desktop I'd check that it works, it looks good inside (no dust bunnies etc), seller seems legit, and I'd throw a new PSU in there once I bought it.
I almost never buy new parts, except phones, and not always then.
I don't think I've bought a new computer since about 2001 or 2002, and then, that was because someone else was paying and her stipulation was new only. Before then... the 1980s?
Computer hardware is like a car: when you exit the shop, 25% of the value just dissipates like a puff of steam. Within about 3 years, another 50-60% is gone. So, I always try to buy kit that's more than about 3Y old, because that's when it becomes cost-effective.
When you pay 10% of the new price, that means you are getting at least 10x the price:performance ratio. It's almost impossible to buy anything new that is 10x faster than something ~3 years old and it has been for 20-25 years or more now.
They're slow and the arch is less compatible? Arm cores in web hosting are typically known as the shit-tier.
I think the main use case for these is some sort of Android build farm, as a CI/CD pipeline with testing of different OS versions and general app building, since they don't have to emulate arm.
I realize the Ampere Altra Q features the Armv8.2-a ISA. Does anybody know if there are chips with Armv8.6-a (or above) or even SVE that one can buy? I did some research but couldn't find any.
Armv8.6-A is almost the same as Armv9.1-A, except that a few features are not mandatory.
There have been no consumer chips with Armv9.1-A, but only with Armv9.0-A and with Armv9.2-A. The only CPU with Armv8.6-A that has ever been announced publicly was the now obsolete Neoverse N2. Neoverse N2 has been skipped by Amazon and I do not know if any other major cloud vendor has used it.
So what you really search for are CPUs with Armv9.2-A (i.e. a superset of Armv8.6-A), i.e. with Cortex-A520 or Cortex-A720 or Cortex-X4 or Cortex-A725 or Cortex-X925.
There are many smartphones launched last year or this year with these CPU cores, but except for them the list of choices is short, i.e. either the very cheap Radxa Orion O6 (Cortex-A720 based), which is fine, but its software is immature, or a very expensive NVIDIA DGX development system (Cortex-X925 based; $4000 from NVIDIA or $3000 from ASUS), or one of the latest Apple computers, which support Armv8.7-A (which do not have SVE, but which have SME).
For the latest Qualcomm CPUs, I have no idea what ISA is supported by them, because Qualcomm always hides very deeply any technical information about their products.
If all you care about is the CPU, then a mid-range Android smartphone in the $400-$500 price range could be a better development system, especially if its USB Type C connector supports USB 3.0 and DisplayPort, like some Motorola Edge models, allowing you to use an external monitor and a docking station.
If you also care about testing together with some standard desktop/server peripherals, the mini-ITX motherboard of Radxa Orion O6 is more appropriate, but encountering bugs in some of its Linux device drivers is likely, which may slow down the development until they are handled.
I think the best thing happened to that system is having an Arctic Cooling device on board. These things are as reliable as it gets.
None of the Arctic Cooling fans I had ever failed or lost performance over the years. Even their first generation desktop fan (Breeze) which runs multiple 8-12 hour shifts with me for the last decade shows any age.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 53.5 ms ] threadQ64-22 on eBay (US) for $150-200 USD / 542-723 PLN.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/365380821650
https://www.ebay.com/itm/365572689742
2-3 years is not a lot. My daily driver laptop is from 2011 and still going strong.
Sure, there are “lemons” out there, but there are also a lot of people who just replace their hardware often.
Non-polymer electrolytic capacitors can dry out, but just about all decent modern motherboards use polymer-based since years ago.
My current NAS is my previous desktop, which I bought in 2015. I tended to keep my desktop on 24/7 due to services, and my NAS as well, so it's been running more or less continuously since then. It's on its second PSU but apart from that chugging along.
I've been using older computer parts like this for a long time, and reliability increased markedly after they switched to non-polymer caps.
Modern higher-end GPUs due to their immense power requirements can have components fail, typically in the voltage regulation. Often this can be fixed relatively cheaply.
If buying a desktop I'd check that it works, it looks good inside (no dust bunnies etc), seller seems legit, and I'd throw a new PSU in there once I bought it.
I was taken aback by this.
I almost never buy new parts, except phones, and not always then.
I don't think I've bought a new computer since about 2001 or 2002, and then, that was because someone else was paying and her stipulation was new only. Before then... the 1980s?
Computer hardware is like a car: when you exit the shop, 25% of the value just dissipates like a puff of steam. Within about 3 years, another 50-60% is gone. So, I always try to buy kit that's more than about 3Y old, because that's when it becomes cost-effective.
When you pay 10% of the new price, that means you are getting at least 10x the price:performance ratio. It's almost impossible to buy anything new that is 10x faster than something ~3 years old and it has been for 20-25 years or more now.
If anyone knows of any, let me know!
I think the main use case for these is some sort of Android build farm, as a CI/CD pipeline with testing of different OS versions and general app building, since they don't have to emulate arm.
Their Ampere A1 free tier is pretty good. 4 core ARM and 24gb ram webserver for free.
There have been no consumer chips with Armv9.1-A, but only with Armv9.0-A and with Armv9.2-A. The only CPU with Armv8.6-A that has ever been announced publicly was the now obsolete Neoverse N2. Neoverse N2 has been skipped by Amazon and I do not know if any other major cloud vendor has used it.
So what you really search for are CPUs with Armv9.2-A (i.e. a superset of Armv8.6-A), i.e. with Cortex-A520 or Cortex-A720 or Cortex-X4 or Cortex-A725 or Cortex-X925.
There are many smartphones launched last year or this year with these CPU cores, but except for them the list of choices is short, i.e. either the very cheap Radxa Orion O6 (Cortex-A720 based), which is fine, but its software is immature, or a very expensive NVIDIA DGX development system (Cortex-X925 based; $4000 from NVIDIA or $3000 from ASUS), or one of the latest Apple computers, which support Armv8.7-A (which do not have SVE, but which have SME).
For the latest Qualcomm CPUs, I have no idea what ISA is supported by them, because Qualcomm always hides very deeply any technical information about their products.
If all you care about is the CPU, then a mid-range Android smartphone in the $400-$500 price range could be a better development system, especially if its USB Type C connector supports USB 3.0 and DisplayPort, like some Motorola Edge models, allowing you to use an external monitor and a docking station.
If you also care about testing together with some standard desktop/server peripherals, the mini-ITX motherboard of Radxa Orion O6 is more appropriate, but encountering bugs in some of its Linux device drivers is likely, which may slow down the development until they are handled.
I wonder where this requirement comes from ...
None of the Arctic Cooling fans I had ever failed or lost performance over the years. Even their first generation desktop fan (Breeze) which runs multiple 8-12 hour shifts with me for the last decade shows any age.