<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">I was on the verge of buying a couple small SBCs back in September, to install CentOS on. But then I stopped to concentrate on my RHCE exam. Now I’m trying to pick up where I left off.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I remember Uli Middleburg said Odroid C2 was not far off having all device drivers in the mainline kernel. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">How’s kernel support for the LeMaker HiKey? Have things moved on since Jim Perrin wrote these build instructions? </div><a href="https://people.centos.org/jperrin/hikey/ReadMe.txt" class="">https://people.centos.org/jperrin/hikey/ReadMe.txt</a><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On 19 Sep 2016, at 18:25, Nick Hardiman <<a href="mailto:nick@internetmachines.co.uk" class="">nick@internetmachines.co.uk</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><div class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">On 18 Sep 2016, at 18:55, Jeffrey Walton <<a href="mailto:noloader@gmail.com" class="">noloader@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br class=""><br class="">There are four small ARMv8 dev-boards I am aware. I have all of them<br class="">for testing software. They are:<br class=""><br class="">* LeMaker HiKey (Aarch64, ASIMD, CRC, Crypto)<br class="">* Pine64 (Aarch64, ASIMD, CRC, Crypto)<br class="">* ODROID-C2 (Aarch64, ASIMD, CRC)<br class="">* Raspberry Pi-3 (Armhf (not even Aarch32))<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Good summary, thanks.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">I would avoid the RPI3. Its in a crummy configuration, and mine died<br class="">after about 2 weeks.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">That’s a shocker. I will strike the RPi from my list of possibles - seems a shame. I wonder how durable the others are.<br class=""><br class="">What I want to do here is find out if these are useful for offloading simple services - maybe one per board. I don’t know the advantages of a set of small, physically discrete, devices running a set of services, and I’d like to find out. I know they’d be a trainwreck for a customer-facing dynamically generated website. But what about NTP? True randomness maybe? How would they handle generating Kerberos tickets, or providing service discovery? Does XEN slow them down to a crawl? Can they generate synthetic load, and monitor the results? No idea.<br class=""><br class="">I may be barking up the wrong tree here. If UEFI is the way forward, I don’t imagine a distro-maintained kernel package will ever be supplied for any of these consumer-size boards. So there’s no avoiding u-boot tinkering, /boot/ copying or kernel compiling when dealing with consumer boards like these. Does that sound right?<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">At the higher end, there are two servers I am aware. I believe the<br class="">Applied Micro X-gene is the Mustang board.<br class=""><br class="">* Mustang board (early ones lack CRC and Crypto)<br class="">* Overdrive 1000 (AMD ARMv8 processor)<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">I searched for the Gigabyte MP30-AR0 after Gordan described it. It’s not right for my pet project here, but I can see the appeal for the day job. And if this 32 core X-Gene3 appears, maybe that will be a lot of bang for your buck.<br class=""><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class="">The Overdrive never arrived (more<br class="">correctly, it never shipped), and I'm trying to get a refund on the<br class="">purchase.<br class=""></blockquote><br class="">Sorry to hear that. Sounds like there are more of these bigger boards on the way - Lenovator Cello maybe?<br class=""><br class="">I don’t know about Cavium, and AMD's Seattle chipsets.<br class=""><br class="">Thanks for the help. I am enlightened.<br class="">Nick<br class=""><br class=""></div></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></div></body></html>