Re: What ARM hardware should we buy and where should we host it?

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

On Tue, Sep 04, 2018 at 02:03:18PM -0400, Leo Famulari wrote:
>On Mon, Sep 03, 2018 at 10:59:38AM -0700, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
>> One of the most promising seems to be the SynQuacer:
>> 
>>   https://www.96boards.org/product/developerbox/
>> 
>> With a 24-core processor, SATA, PCIe, USB 3.0, micro-atx form-factor,
>> and 4 ram slots (up to 64GB, in theory, but may be picky about
>> ram).
>
>It has 24 cores of Cortex-A53 CPUs, which are intended for "mobile"
>applications (smartphones and similar). IMO, it would be great to get
>more powerful processors. But, if this thing is working for Debian and
>can handle sustained load on all 24 cores, that's already better than
>some of the armhf boards we have. According to that Debian mailing list
>post, this can do both 32 and 64-bit.

Correct.

>Steve, do you find the SynQuacer can handle being fully loaded for
>extended periods of time?

I've been doing rebuilds of the entire Debian archive for the last few
weeks on a Synquacer and some other machines. It's not shown any
issues at all during that period. A53 cores are not all that fast for
single-threaded code, but the CPU is claimed to only hit 5W flat out
on all 24 cores. It's got a large passive heat sink and a small fan in
the PSU. No issues seen.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
  Getting a SCSI chain working is perfectly simple if you remember that there
  must be exactly three terminations: one on one end of the cable, one on the
  far end, and the goat, terminated over the SCSI chain with a silver-handled
  knife whilst burning *black* candles. --- Anthony DeBoer