Banana Pi 24-Core ARM Server Running Ubuntu Breaks Cover (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: ARM-based server processors have threatened to take on Intel in the data center for some time but not much has materialized thus far in terms of significant deployments. However, a new breed of low cost ARM server implementations may be in the works with a many-core platform called Banana Pi. The latest Banana Pi device being teased is something very different in the form of a 24-core ARM server that speculation suggests might be sold as a Banana Pi server board or as a finished server product.

A video has surfaced that reportedly shows a 24-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor with 32GB of RAM, though the OS only sees 29.4GB of that RAM. The OS is Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS with MATE desktop. Unless the processor used in this device is something unannounced, and that seems unlikely, the chip itself would likely be a SocioNext SC2A11. The same processor is used in the Linaro Developer Box. The demo shows the server fully loaded at 100% CPU utilization building a Linux kernel and reportedly the system also supports NVMe storage as well as TensorFlow workloads for machine learning. Not much else is known about the system at this time but it's an interesting development in the Linux server space to be sure.

Comments

Why virtualization

[DrYak]

How well is x86 virtualization on ARM these days?

1. qemu-user-mode is a thing and has been for probably the past decade
(And specialized software like DOSBOX has had a great time on ARM gaming devices)

2. Why the hell do you need x86 virtualization on an ARM server for the cloud ?!?

It used to be something important back when most businesses ran Windows servers in-house, running proprietary binary x86 Win32 applications.

Nowadays the cloud is mostly Linux, and is running mostly interpreted languages (like Python, Javascript, etc.)

Linux is opensource, you can compile the user land on any architecture that pleases you (e.g.: look for ArmBian, RaspBian, and other such ARM-specialized Debian derivatives, etc.), and then subsequently Node.js and Python3 will happily execute whatever code you throw at them, no matter if they run on a different Arch than the dev's laptop on which they were written.
If your business use software that you write in an actual compiled-language, you can cross compile or compile on a ARM machine before deployment as part of your devops.