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Comment by mntmn | Hacker News Reader

Funny, just today I google on ThunderX boards and tried to track down the latest AMD Opteron A1100 developments. I wish there were simple, stripped down development boards for these kind of processors available. I would certainly enjoy building a personal computer from them. Sadly, there seems to be no viable competition today in terms of performance to x86/Core i7.

If you wanted to design a simple computer PCB with a RISC CPU in the GHz range (or 500 Mhz+), what would you choose?

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http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php

The ODROID-C2 is a neat device, but not at all comparable with an A1100. The A1100 has 8 A57 cores, while the ODROID only has 4 A53s. Mainline kernel support for the A1100 (and HuskyBoard, etc) has been relatively solid for a while now, while the C-2's SoC only made it into 4.6, and we're seeing the beginnings of a device tree in 4.7.

edit: Some A1100s only have 4 cores. They're still 4 beefier cores than the S905.

You can buy an ODROID-C2 today, which A1100 systems are available ?

And that's the fundamental problem with ARM servers...

none, as far as I know. First likely to become available is probably going to be http://www.lenovator.com/product/103.html - they're claiming Q2 2016.

You can certainly make a usable PC from a raspberry pi, one of the varieties of beaglebones, etc. Assuming you don't mind early-2000s levels of performance they are perfectly serviceable. There isn't anything a hobbyist could reasonably be able to put together that is anywhere close to x86 performance though.

actually for some cool server performance stuff a raspberry pi is not really great, especially since he is missing at least some sata interface. Beagleboard is better but still misses sata

The new Beaglebone has eSATA, indeed it will not be that great for high-performance SSDs or many server applications but it could be perfectly fine for a PC.

Dual gigabit Ethernet ports and USB 3 round out the impressive X-15's impressive features. It's not available yet but should be by the end of the month or early July based on the wiki. If it runs OpenBSD I might choose it over Soekris.

Ah yes I forgot about the dual ethernet ports, it might be really nice paired with a good ethernet switch as a router system!

Probably the answer is AMD Cello[1]. This has a quad core Seattle. However I have had mine on preorder since April, and it still hasn't shipped (still 15 days to go in "Q2" though :-)

[1] http://www.lenovator.com/product/103.html

If this ever ships I'd be interested in getting one. I didn't realize anyone was actually making A1100 in boards you could actually buy, I thought they were all sold to integrators and they were only going to do the next iteration downmarket.

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