[Discuss] I need a recommendation for a Linux-compatible high-end PC builder

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2018-01-12 20:06-0800 pw wrote:

[...]
> I'm not so sure how 'green' ARM is compared to anything else. The power
> usage is less but how much work do you get done? Not everything can run on a 
> phone. Also, the materials represent a huge environmental cost.
> AMD CPUs will also run on a wind turbine of solar panel.

All good points.  Anyway, I will keep looking, and I am not going to
worry about power costs of a few Watts here are there, but I will
evaluate the hardware package I finally decide to go with to make sure
it doesn't have excessive power use compared to the others.

>
>
>> So, Peter, you have already dug up one reference to a single ARM-based
>> system that had considerably more than the 8 cores on the M3, but
>> there were no monetary or power costs I could find for that system. So if 
>> you could find those or it you find other ARM-based single
>> computer systems with lots of cores that consume little total power,
>> please let me know.
>> 
>
> That chip is vaporware so far. It was only introduced in November 2017.
> Vendors would need to design hardware. It is a system on chip (SOC), which 
> will make design easier, but it's expensive for designers to
> work up systems from scratch.
>
>
> I'm always on the hunt for the next better tech. I will certainly
> give you a heads up if I see anything.

Thanks.

>
> I really like the idea of using a bunch of $39 Pi devices as a
> cluster. But my attentions are pretty divided. Even though much
> easier methods for making every application massively parallel
> could be put to use most of my personal applications end up being
> multi-threaded at best.

I liked using Pi devices that way as well.  But even if the distmake
concerns turned out to be trivial, for me the biggest downside of
multiple computers is they just take more of my time to sysadmin so I
will likely go back to looking exclusively at single-computer
solutions instead.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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