System76 launching ARM Pro server with 96 cores up to 1TB ECC RAM and 32TB storage
system76.com
system76.com
My data-point, as best I can recall:
- ordered a serval laptop
- long delays with minimal communication
- laptop arrived and motherboard died within a few days
After sending it back for repairs and haggling over the warrantee (DHL damaged the case, so they didn't want to pay for the motherboard initially), I got the thing replaced and it ran smoothly for many years.
EDIT: to be clear, I was ultimately happy with the device itself -- it finally died in 2013. It's rather the shipping/service/etc that was disappointing, though I've seen much worse.
System76 selects Clevo configurations that are more-or-less compatible with Linux, puts a brand on them and sells them at a somewhat-inflated price.
That thing was pretty poor quality though. Died fall of 15, replaced it with an XPS 13 which is still going strong.
After opening it I saw that various components had melted. That too, was less than two year. They were both babied and well cared for.
The only advantage it has over the deluge of low end laptop, is that it will with some version of Ubuntu. If you generally don't find installing Linux difficult, then it's not really any advantage.
I'm reasonably happy with Lenovo t560 I replaced it with.
My computer shipped with a screw loose inside the case which shorted the motherboard a few times. It didn't cause any permanent damage but it was a little disappointing. I chalked it up to a freak shipping accident knocking something loose but idk. The case design and actual computer specs have been great though.
I'd still recommend their laptops if you need a good computer on a budget :)
And you're still surprised? :D
http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Rack-Server/R150-T61-rev-110
http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Rack-Server/R150-T62-rev-100
What value-add does System76 provide?
...You're actually right.
fwiw, nobody in this space really gives a shit about you unless you're spending $50k or more, and realistically $250k or more on an ongoing basis. you're better off going to fry's or buying from a used gear vendor if you want small quantities.
it cost us a considerable amount of money and time finding this vendor, so i consider it a trade secret (and the oem too). fwiw, their website and marketing are atrocious but they deliver product on time every time. i've been in business long enough to know how these things work.
Now if only the Qualcomm Falkor was available to buy ...
I hope that this is just a rebranded system showing the redyness of System76 and raising awareness about such products so that they're better positioned for the ThunderX2 release later this year.
ARM the company does design both low power and power efficient implementations of the ARM architecture. In fact for some specific power targets (mobile for example) they are more efficient than the corresponding Intel CPUs.
This is still irrelevant as Cavium design its own ARM cores from scratch (i.e. it doesn't use ARM reference designs) specifically for server use; now, they are not very good, but that's another story.
I agree, but only if the measurement of power efficiency includes idle periods -- eg. "browse for 5 minutes, lock phone and wait 30 minutes, repeat".
I don't believe you can provide a source showing an ARM CPU executing a particular workload (i.e. not including idle periods) at greater power efficiency than a same-generation Intel x86 CPU.
I am not one of those types who asks for refunds on anything. This was genuinely a defective laptop with a faulty keyboard (turns out that is how they were shipping it back then to everyone) and their answer was to replace with the new one (after the CEO sent a bulk email to every customer) . Why should I have to go through that hassle ? This was the first time I almost thought of doing a chargeback but didn't.
It happens. I've done field replacements on Dell laptops for DOA components for non-technical friends, most recently a dvd drive and previously a keyboard. Dell shipped the components and I swapped them out for exchange. Dell quoted moderately long (over a week) round trip if it went to a service center but my friends wouldn't have attempted it themselves.
I was thinking that System76 might have problems not being in a volume sweet spot; IBM and later Lenovo could invest a lot in a fancy, well-staffed repair facility near a shipment hub, while System76 may get warranty and repair requests that feel only occasional and so just can't support huge investments in being great and fast at it. :-(
I'm still hoping to continue supporting them because of their commitment to Linux-based computing. (Edit: other people in this thread sure didn't seem to like their laptops, but I guess I had a much better experience in other respects.)
And an even sharper contrast to the ThinkPad onsite service ;)
(of course, as you can probably tell by my username I'm not a big fan of Lenovo after Superfish etc. So I'll just sit here and wish that Apple would start offering a similar service)
This is probably the first laptop from them that I could consider buying, judging solely on that small picture of it.
Still super-thick, and I don't know if I would feel comfortable buying that over the XPS, but at least it's got HiDPI, which for the price they sell their laptops for I feel should be included.
Lifted the LCD to find it had some much flex, it felt like tagboard. Plastic housings were incredibly flimsy feeling. Those 10" netbooks that were popular for a while never felt as cheap.
We kept them as emergency backups and used one as a server, tucked in the server closet for a bit, but otherwise stuck with Dell.
Who knows, maybe the aluminum one will remove those problems.
It almost seems like they're showing how thick it is...
You make your laptops super thin and people complain about ports and only 16GB of RAM and no repairability. You make your laptops repairable with three different kinds of USB ports plus HDMI and 32GB of RAM, and people complain it's super-thick.
Absent from the page: "repairable", "three USB ports", "32GB of RAM".
Facebook did the same evaluation recently and decided that the Intel Xeon-D chip was best [1].
YMMV
Hopefully the WhatsApp team is investigating high-core count ARM architecture and will report on it.
Turns out, theirs was rubbish. The whole laptop wasn't elegant or well constructed, but it was durable. I had to send it in for repairs once, that went well. Still, I'd never buy anything of theirs again. Ever.
HOORAY.
But a bright green on pixel no matter where on the screen would be a continuous distraction for me.
I can't begin to guess at the underlying physics of why doing that works for things that persist across a cold boot, but the few times I've had a stuck pixel, they've been useful.
Spec sheet for the CPU is there. I just don't see how IO doesn't end up murdering performance. 16MB shared L2 is across all the cores?
Not really informed enough to say it would be the performance bottleneck but it seems like it would be to me in most server environments.
I ended up having to pay 400$ more for delivery + VAT for a laptop (didn't know about the VAT tax at that time). Very good performance, but rather mediocre quality (1 usb port is completely unusable).
It'll be interesting to see benchmarks of how this performs.
ARM is a very promising platform and there's no technical reason why it can't out-perform Intel. It's just a matter of engineering it with that intent. Right now it's primarily intended to be efficient and good enough for mobile phones.
Exactly. That's why RISC-V variants focused on raw performance still have a differentiator.
I think "engineering capabilities and experience" is a valid technical reason.
But the real "reason" is most likely branch prediction and caching. I wouldn't be surprised if Intel's NetBurst microarchitecture was more complex than the entire CPU section of an ARM processor. I'm having trouble finding transistor count for the CPU section, for ARM.
You can get huge concessions in Intel kit in quantity, particularly E7 stuff.
I'm really wanting to shake Intel if possible, and I'm struggling to find chassis that support the amount of addons I require... but with these ARM servers and the network I/O they have onboard, I'm quite excited.
I don't know much about them, but from my first impression it looks like a company with lack of focus. I'm not sure how they will be able to create killer product in any of the segments they're trying to compete in.
Based on my above observation (admittedly superficial), I would never buy anything from them. I would not trust the quality nor their ability to be able to support it.
I probably won't buy their stuff again, because I only run Debian these days, but I think that they're a decent company and I recommend them to folks who want to run Ubuntu.
I've been pretty happy with Zareason so far, although these days one does often have to contact them ahead of time to be sure Debian will run fine.
> I would think that merely having the promise of Ubuntu support out of the box would make it better to install Debian, than on some random Windows machine.
I'd have thought so, too, except that getting Debian onto my System76 laptop was no fun at all. Ubuntu really is tolerant of non-free software, binary blobs and other things that I'd like to get away from.
I often forget that other people have different use cases than myself. Thanks for the insight :)
That's funny, because Apple is the exception, it has far fewer products than any large PC or phone manufacturer. Apple is hyper-focused, much to the chagrin of people who'd like to buy an updated Mac Pro workstation.
I can see how they would be nice if you were in a mostly Mac creative department or something though.
Also note that their niche is shipping Linux preinstalled devices. If they did have a killer mass consumer product, they'd have a difficult time coping with consumers expecting and demanding windows on PCs.
System76 is neither OEM nor ODM. In fact, they are not a manufacturer at all - they assemble and ship systems designed by others.
It was a terrible experience across the board, never again. Highly recommend the Zenbook or the Dell XPS for linux distros :).
I personally have the Zenbook but I have three friends with the XPS now. There was some complaining on the XPS about the backlight or something?
On the bright side, it does help a lot for the battery life (I get around 8 hours usually).
I also have an older system76 laptop and I would definitely recommend the XPS (13 or 15) over it if you want something lightweight with good battery life.
Here's some (mostly negative) thoughts on it from last time they came up: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12851080
The developer who used it liked it though it didn't move much once it hit his desk. I didn't like the keyboard and thought the finish wasn't polished but I wasn't using it.
https://research.cs.wisc.edu/multifacet/papers/ieeemicro16_c...
It not the ISA that makes it desirable. It's all the tooling, apps, branding, and talent around it. You have to rebuild that stuff for new ISA's. You also have to get the market to trust a new one after so many perished. That is why companies pay ARM $1-15 million for licenses to use that ISA and brand name.