Banana Pi 24-Core ARM Server Spied Running Ubuntu 18.04 – HotHardware

ARM is not magic. FLOP/KW for high performance platforms should converge. Low performance, in-order ARM cores should be more efficient than x86 ones for the same throughput and ARM can go even lower, to spaces where there is no x86 core right now, both in performance and in power consumption, but laptops are not that space. Plastic, battery, display, memory, storage, and assembly will cost the same and that alone makes a possible difference in CPU price alone almost irrelevant.

It's not really about FLOPS. These sorts of many core, low performance per core systems do well in handling lots of I/O where there isn't all that much processing involved per node, and/or micro-latency isn't much of an issue, but lots can operate in parallel.

For actual FLOPS/kW where the FLOPS matter, you still can't beat GPUs, or for non GPU-able code high-wattage high-performance CPUs that can chew through data like nobody's business. These low power systems' FLOPS take more kW in aggregate to perform the same work in similar ballpark times. But when things are I/O bound, the low power cores should be able to handle messages & transactions with much less wattage overhead than what the high single-thread performance CPUs have to spool up.

The "Banana Pi" brand is well known among small board enthusiasts for offering a better value per dollar if you don't care much for support from the ecosystem. I'm not sure this will be a small board, however.

It seems the board has 32 gigs with 8 reserved for the GPU. That alone makes it cost more than any of the Raspberrys.

I would love to play with it.