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  • I would like to take a moment for this line:

    > The “wooster” system stays powered on, churning through RISC-V package builds. It may be weak in single-thread, but it flies when it comes to multi-core load.

    Feels vaguely hilarious that the ARM box didn't work out as a desktop, so instead it gets repurposed to cross-compiling RISC-V packages:)

    by yjftsjthsd-h
  • My ARM64 experiment started in 2020 with the MacBook Air M1 and I have not looked back. ARM on the desktop or your lap is possible.
    by st3fan
  • I'm not sure why the author didn't attempt to dive deeper into the error message he saw. amd_vcn_dec sounds like it's an issue with the GPU's video decoding logic. If there's a timeout when trying to process a decode request, it may be that power management for the GPU is buggy somehow. Given that this is a server build and idle power consumption is likely not a big deal, I'd suggest pinning the GPU power state to see if it resolves the issue (see amdgpu.ppfeaturemask and amdgpu.runpm kernel parameters).
    by 10000truths
  • I feel that OP should be congratulated on trying!

    I dont see this experiment as any kind of "failure". Something was learned, and OP is better off for it. Computing and science literature would be a lot better off if people, like OP, honestly documented where things went wrong.

    by kjellsbells
  • > there was no org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia in Flatpak repositories for AArch64

    All he had to do was build some packages from source, right? It's really worth learning how to do this, since it removes a lot of constraints.

    And the kernel patch should land in the kernel pretty soon, I hope? He won't have to run a patched kernel forever. Should be possible to get that in a release in a year or so?

    by edg5000
  • Fascinating! I've been running the laptop version-ish of this experiment with the 14M9610, and my major complaint is Device Tree sucks. It's been explained to me why all of ARM can't just enumerate devices like PCs do, but it still sucks. This means every ARM device starts off in custom kernel territory, which makes all sorts of hacks okay to begin with, since you need a custom kernel anyway.
    by fragmede
  • I don't understand the kernel problem. Why did he feel he had to rebuild the kernel weekly? When the amdgpu stopped working why couldn't he just go back to the last working kernel?
    by dn3500
  • I'm not surprised at the outcome. These Ampere system single core/thread performance is pretty low and that is where you feel it. The OS/software simply cannot allocate the threads across enough cores effectively to make up for this difference.

    This is why things like the Apple M Series feels so fast, because while they don't win the multi core performance especially when going up against a 80 core beast like this, they have single thread performance exactly were it is needed.

    Maybe we will need 80 cores in future, that is cool but for daily home use it is still just way too much for what we need.

    by HerbManic

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