128-core MONSTER Arm PC: faster than a Mac Pro!

Special thanks to ADLINK and Ampere for sending the Dev Workstation and Dev Kit, and to Maxon, ptitSeb, and many others for help debugging issues in the course of making this video. It has been a LONG term effort, and I am still learning new things every day :)

Mentioned in this video:

#Arm #Linux #Sponsored

Contents:

00:00 - Move over, Mac Pro
00:52 - The ultimate Arm workstation
01:20 - GPU get
02:09 - Which upgrades do you want? Yes.
02:42 - RAM is weird, and I put in 384 GB of it
04:46 - 96 to 128 core CPU
06:07 - Memory bandwidth holds me back
06:30 - Nvidia or AMD? (for arm64)
07:24 - GPU Drivers
07:57 - GPU acceleration is hit or miss
09:25 - Windows on Arm: drivers lacking
09:57 - Cinebench 2024 champ
11:17 - Minecraft on Windows - okay
11:38 - Minecraft on Linux - BUTTER
12:19 - Games, Games, Games
13:50 - Going for the efficiency crown
14:47 - Infinitely more upgradeable

[fujinshu]

Also, about the Ti in the GPU, NVIDIA pronounces it both ways. Jensen, the CEO, pronounces it as T-I (Tee-eye), while Jeff Fisher pronounces it as Ti (Tie/Ty)

[QuentinStephens]

One thing on your RAM vs core discussion: L3 cache requirements scale non-linearly with core counts thanks to the increased incidence of L2 cache misses.

[BlackPanthaa]

Threadripper 399x user here, they will never fix over 64 thread usage in windows. I've tried it all.

[IamTheHolypumpkin]

Honestly I wouldn't at all be surprised if valve would tell us tomorrow that they release a fork of Box-86 and Box-64 build right into steam so to support all steam games on ARM and RISC-V.
Valve would be insane enough to do this and there's no number 3 so it allowed.

[KGJYS]

We're finally returning to the RAM situation we had a decade ago, where workstation motherboards had lots of RAM slots. My (now very old) super micro x8dah+-f board has 18 (9 per CPU). IMO, the biggest problem with modern processors is the extremely limited PCI-e lanes available. Look at chip specs over the years, and it's something that has steadily decreased. With Thunderbolt and NVME, PCIe lanes are the most limiting feature on all my computers - even laptops.

[someguy]

I really want to see these in a consumer level platform while keeping itself upgradeable.

[danagoyette]

Something to note about NVIDIA's ARM binary drivers: they have driver library files for x86-64 and aarch64, but they don't have armhf driver libs for software running under box86. That is, box86 converts 32-bit Intel into 32-bit ARM, not into 64-bit ARM. For i386 games, you'd likely need to use an AMD GPU -- Polaris (RX5xx) or older.

One game I find very useful for checking the performance of GPUs on ARM is Veloren. It uses Metal on MacOS, Vulkan on Linux, and Vulkan or DX12 on Windows (though there's no ARM Windows build).

[Gaming_with_Martin]

ARM is really making huge moves am convinced very soon they will have 6 cores 8 cores and 16 cores lineups for consumers

[SaltCollecta]

3 grand for a 128 core CPU. I remember when Intel used to charge 5 grand for a quad core server. Lol, what an exciting time to be alive. I will buy one in a few years when it's stable and on the used market for a reasonable price.

[denverag]

11:00 I think this has been a problem in Cinebench since inception, originally it was only an issue for very niche 4 and 8 socket systems, but with EPYC, Threadripper and Xeon Platium (cascade lake) with up to 56-64 cores per socket and 2-4 sockets, many cores started going un-used in and after 2019

[PrinceWesterburg]

Thermal Paste: Forget what LTT says, its a physical junction that transfers heat, the larger the contact the more heat can move across it.
So you are completely right to spread the thermal paste out. Physics!

[alexjensen]

The only downside of Microcenter is that Brentwood Prominade is a post apocalyptic hellscape of a parking lot. The only saving grace is that there is a super secret way there that allows you to skip the bulk of the minivan wars.

[montecorbit]

At 2:43
Ubuntu and Windows for ARM....

Did you try any other Linux distro?? Just curious on that....

I have been coming down here to suggest ChimeraOS because it runs steam very well, but then I remembered it may not have an ARM flavor....if it does that might be a good way to go!! Manjaro apparently has the ability to act like SteamOS since both of them are based on ARC Linux....

Hope you have an excellent day!!

[aliyuabba]

Keep them vidoes coming please. This will greatly help Windows on ARM development going forward before the X Elite drops.

[kxuydhj]

9:30 this makes me disproportionally happy as a linux fanboy. finally the tables have turned.

[Daggenthal]

This is so fucking sick man, I love the development that ARM desktop / server cores have been making! I know we have other Architectures as well (RISC-V) and it's awesome that they're all making strides, but to see this amount of progress now? Fuck yeah!

I remember watching your older videos where you literally couldn't detect the GPU or even push anything out to the frame buffer, but now look at it :D

[juleast]

Finally someone who prespreads their thermal compound! 😃
I've always just seen so many people just leave it to squish itself but I learned from my dad who touched computers for 20+ years that prespreading is better.

[olavaaf]

Nice video!
Almost getting one myself! Is it the 2, 8Ghz version of the CPU Ampere will ship?

Regarding the Mac, let’s not forget M2 Max and M3 Max have tremendous memory bandwidth, 400GB/s.. quite much more so than a DDR4 system I believe. That makes them maybe faster in memory bandwidth limited problems, such as several types of simulations etc with low flops per byte ratio.
AmpereOne has the DDR5 memory system support. However, I have not seen it easily available like this CPU is.

With only 3 out of 4 memory channels being connected, maybe the 96 core version is a “better fit” as the amount of bandwidth per core will be quite better, for anything bandwith sensitive that is.

[fxrisxmxli]

I wish we had something like Micro Centre where I'm from. Tech heaven

[LollosoSiTV]

Hey Jeff, running the bedrock edition, especially the mobile version as you did, is a far too easy challenge for your rig.
I suggest running and comparing the latest java version and a specific modded version: Faboulously Optimized.
To get any architecture incompatibilities out of the way, consider using a launcher that comes as a JAR file, such as the Technic launcher

Make sure to use the latest jre (20-21) and set the proper JVM flags
Additional bonuses: shaders, resource pack with parallax mapping + physics mod pro (then grab a fire extinguisher)
Looking forward to hearing from you!