Intro - Jeff Geerling

Name: Jeff Geerling
Title/Job Description: Developer / Video creator
Company: Midwestern Mac LLC
Location/Country: St. Louis, MO, USA
First AArch64 device: Raspberry Pi model B
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-geerling-086bb2a
Twitter Handle: https://twitter.com/geerlingguy
Other Social Media: About | Jeff Geerling
Favorite Book/Movie/Song/TV Show: Lord of the Rings (book and movies), though Jurassic Park comes in a close second.

I love doing strange and slightly insane things with computers, mostly to explore the limits of what they can do. I often take smaller/weaker machines and stretch them beyond what they are meant to do, but I also love working with more powerful machines to see what fun things I can do with them beyond the normal use cases.

With Ampere, I’m mainly interested to see if ARM CPUs can be built up in a similar way as the X86 ecosystem, so that Apple doesn’t have a stranglehold on all the ā€˜faster than an SBC’ computers, and so people could get into high performance ARM without having to rent a server from AWS, Azure, or Google.

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Wow, Red Shirt Jeff is in da place! :partying_face:
Welcome! :people_hugging:

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I am amazed that Jeff is here too. It is so cool to see a developer who is also a YouTube star!

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So good to see you on here Jeff. I really enjoy your youtube channel.

I’m with you on that goal, I really want to see ARM give x86_64 a run for its money.

Please, if you can, help raise awareness for the need for companies like Qualcomm to make it easy to run Linux on their CPU’s. I’m new to Ampere they seem to have a great story with Linux but not enough cheap hardware. (To my knowledge)

I’m so excited fot the opportunities on ARM!

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Yes, we (developers) 've been waiting for an ā€œaffordableā€ aarch64 desktop for ages…
We now have a few different machines available, but not yet affordable I’m afraid…

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ARM is growing steam for sure. Almost there.

It’s hard to compete with the momentum of x86, so many new + used systems across all kinds of price and performance levels.

Things like the Windows dev kit 2023 is bringing some decent kit to a mass audience. We want more! :slight_smile:

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We’ll see if we can get Ampere to bump down to lower price points someday too :wink:

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I’m not sure if it’s an apples-to-apples comparison, but it seems like the latest dev kit is gradually getting closer to being reasonably priced when compared to an X86_64 PC.
However, it’s been a while since I’ve purchased a desktop machine, so the price points I have in mind could be outdated.
I haven’t crunched the numbers yet for the total including a supported graphics card, a solid SSD, and a minimum of 64GB RAM… just something to ponder. :thinking:

In any case, if the price tag weren’t an issue, I could definitely see myself adding that machine to my collection.

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here is a developer kit that is cheaper: Ampere Altra Dev Kit – I-Pi SMARC

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The 80 core model looks like a beast. $2,600 is not terrible for what you’re getting there. I need to save up some pennies so I can click :: add to cart ::

On the consumer tech side of things, I’ve been hacking on a Lenovo C630 rocking a SnapDragon 850. It’s an ancient SOC, but is easily one of my favorite laptops I’ve ever had.
It has it’s flaws, no doubt, but as a web browser / server terminal / light dev machine, it’s fabulous.

The standby time is DAYS, close to a week. I never have to worry about it, it’s always ready to do what I need to do. Which that alone is enough to spark the ARM revolution in my eyes.

Now if I could having something equivalent to an Apple Silicon chip that has the battery life of my C630 but greater horsepower
DroolingHomerSimpsonsGIF

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True — though it would be awesome to find a 16, 24, or 32-core variant someday that could hit something like a $1000-1500 price point! It’s difficult with all the other IO that’s expected, but maybe if the Dev Kit is successful there is an appetite for desktop-class Ampere chips (versus workstation/server).

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That’s a good point. I’m pretty happy on my 6 core x 12 thread AMD cpu but having 2x,3x,4x the cores (for more VM’s) and equal or less power draw would be great for a desktop.

For DIY-ers that would be a small premium for a lot of value add. I could see a demand in small/medium businesses as well.

I hope your videos and the growing interest in ARM help highlight this as a viable market for Ampere leadership. They’ve got the best ARM gear going!

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