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I am very ignorant of the current ARM cloud offerings. Is it similar prices but less power usage? Or have they had to ramp up the watts to compete?

justizin 4y ago
not sure about pricing here, but graviton on aws has generally offered more performance at a lower price point, which is likely linked to lower power usage and perhaps lower cost of custom silicon vs intel. the notion, "the cloud is expensive", ignores the fact that the cloud is not just rented hardware, but staff, facilities, planning, management, etc.. there are businesses where it makes more sense to own hardware and employ your own staff, but if you just want generic compute and storage, you're unlikely to do it as well for less. also you cannot easily source arm hardware commercially, there is the honeycomb lx2, and its' lead time is months for a single unit. if you want hundreds of nodes, you're gonna use a cloud provider who manufactures their own silicon.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  > you cannot easily source arm hardware commercially Buy Mac Minis and run virtual linux inside?
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    I've been passively curious about this for a homelab--does linux virtualize on apple silicon today? I was of the impression this didn't work when they announced m1 in 2020, but I could be misremembering.
    - vbezhenar 4y ago
      Absolutely. It worked from day one. There are issues with emulating x86 Linux, but that’s a different story. For ARM Linux — just ordinary qemu works fine.
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
        Oh, interesting. That's great to hear!
  - api 4y ago
    You can (in theory) run Linux straight on Apple Silicon. It's not locked like the iPad and iPhone. The M1 Ultra would be a pretty solid high volume server if you can manage to plug a 10-40gbps LAN dongle into it. I believe USB-C and/or thunderbolt connectors like that exist. In theory so far because I'm not sure if there are mature installers and such yet.
    - dochtman 4y ago
      The Asahi Linux installer worked flawlessly on my MacBook Pro M1 Max, though it asks you to do some low level things like repartitioning the drive.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > the notion, "the cloud is expensive", ignores the fact that the cloud is not just rented hardware, but staff, facilities, planning, management, etc.. Not at all. Any organization that runs its datacenters can calculate a TCO. It's really business 101.

justizin 4y ago

not sure about pricing here, but graviton on aws has generally offered more performance at a lower price point, which is likely linked to lower power usage and perhaps lower cost of custom silicon vs intel. the notion, "the cloud is expensive", ignores the fact that the cloud is not just rented hardware, but staff, facilities, planning, management, etc.. there are businesses where it makes more sense to own hardware and employ your own staff, but if you just want generic compute and storage, you're unlikely to do it as well for less. also you cannot easily source arm hardware commercially, there is the honeycomb lx2, and its' lead time is months for a single unit. if you want hundreds of nodes, you're gonna use a cloud provider who manufactures their own silicon.

vbezhenar 4y ago
> you cannot easily source arm hardware commercially Buy Mac Minis and run virtual linux inside?
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  I've been passively curious about this for a homelab--does linux virtualize on apple silicon today? I was of the impression this didn't work when they announced m1 in 2020, but I could be misremembering.
  - vbezhenar 4y ago
    Absolutely. It worked from day one. There are issues with emulating x86 Linux, but that’s a different story. For ARM Linux — just ordinary qemu works fine.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      Oh, interesting. That's great to hear!
- api 4y ago
  You can (in theory) run Linux straight on Apple Silicon. It's not locked like the iPad and iPhone. The M1 Ultra would be a pretty solid high volume server if you can manage to plug a 10-40gbps LAN dongle into it. I believe USB-C and/or thunderbolt connectors like that exist. In theory so far because I'm not sure if there are mature installers and such yet.
  - dochtman 4y ago
    The Asahi Linux installer worked flawlessly on my MacBook Pro M1 Max, though it asks you to do some low level things like repartitioning the drive.
goodpoint 4y ago
> the notion, "the cloud is expensive", ignores the fact that the cloud is not just rented hardware, but staff, facilities, planning, management, etc.. Not at all. Any organization that runs its datacenters can calculate a TCO. It's really business 101.