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, Iām mainly interested to see if ARM CPUs can be built up in a similar way as the X86 ecosystem, so that Apple doesnāt have a stranglehold on all the āfaster than an SBCā computers, and so people could get into high performance ARM without having to rent a server from AWS, Azure, or Google.
So good to see you on here Jeff. I really enjoy your youtube channel.
Iām 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 CPUās. Iām new to Ampere they seem to have a great story with Linux but not enough cheap hardware. (To my knowledge)
Yes, we (developers) 've been waiting for an āaffordableā aarch64 desktop for agesā¦
We now have a few different machines available, but not yet affordable Iām afraidā¦
Iām not sure if itās 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However, itās been a while since Iāve purchased a desktop machine, so the price points I have in mind could be outdated.
I havenāt crunched the numbers yet for the total including a supported graphics card, a solid SSD, and a minimum of 64GB RAMā¦ just something to ponder.
In any case, if the price tag werenāt an issue, I could definitely see myself adding that machine to my collection.
The 80 core model looks like a beast. $2,600 is not terrible for what youāre getting there. I need to save up some pennies so I can click :: add to cart ::
On the consumer tech side of things, Iāve been hacking on a Lenovo C630 rocking a SnapDragon 850. Itās an ancient SOC, but is easily one of my favorite laptops Iāve ever had.
It has itās flaws, no doubt, but as a web browser / server terminal / light dev machine, itās fabulous.
The standby time is DAYS, close to a week. I never have to worry about it, itās 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
True ā 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! Itās difficult with all the other IO thatās expected, but maybe if the Dev Kit is successful there is an appetite for desktop-class Ampere chips (versus workstation/server).
Thatās a good point. Iām pretty happy on my 6 core x 12 thread AMD cpu but having 2x,3x,4x the cores (for more VMās) 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. Theyāve got the best ARM gear going!
