Supermicro recently introduced an Arm-based server: the ARS-210M-NR and Servethehome tested it (opens in a new tab), loading it with four Nvidia A16 cards.
The test server came with a 16 core Ampere Altra Max Arm processor, clocked at 4 GHz, with 28 DDR16 memory modules (5 GB total memory), two XNUMX GbE capable SPFXNUMX ports, XNUMX x two .XNUMX-inch bays and a pair of two-kW power units. , all really neatly assembled into a tool-less chassis.
The icing on the cake is the quartet of Ampere-based Nvidia A16 graphics cards. Each board comes with 6 GB of GDDR16 ECC memory and four GPUs that sit on a full-length, full-height dual-slot PCB with passive cooling. The A100 isn't Nvidia's most powerful data center card; it would be the AXNUMX; however, it is ideal for service providers looking to get the maximum number of simultaneous users on one card.
But (*16*) roll...
In terms of raw performance, each of these GPUs has half the number of CUDA cores of the Geforce RTX 16, so yes, it should be able to run the legendary game Crysis without too much hiccup, so theoretically, could have 16 iterations of one of . the most demanding games ever running simultaneously - all you need to do is create 16 virtual machines and load XNUMX copies of Crysis.
No cost details were given, but since the A16 sells for around $000 and a fully loaded server with matching credentials costs around $XNUMX, you have to shell out more than $XNUMX for such a system.
The power of the cloud
Now, who would need such an exuberance of power? For starters, cloud gaming is now mainstream (despite Google saving itself earlier this year when it discontinued Stadia) and it's the likes of the ARS-210M-NR that make it happen.
Beyond that, it's VDI (Video Desktop Infrastructure) for businesses and enterprises. The rise of hybrid work has acted as a catalyst for Virtual Workstation (and Virtual PC) adoption, as working from home has become a reality for millions of users. And just one of these servers (*16*) will host a number of VMs (virtual machines); A recent test from cloud computing company Nutanix showed that two Nvidia A16 graphics cards can run XNUMX virtual machines, which means that four cards should be able to run XNUMX.
Of course, you may need to put in a more powerful CPU than the Altra Max and also more memory (Nutanix used one with XNUMXTB of RAM and two Intel Xeon Gold XNUMX, each with XNUMX physical cores). The increase in Software as a Service support for virtual GPUs in a wide range of applications (for example, Photoshop or Google Chrome) is the reason why thick servers with many GPUs are becoming common.
Other applications, such as web hosting, can benefit from high CPU core counts, which is why VPS (virtual private servers) are so affordable now, the cost gap with dedicated servers and full solutions remains high. .
Servethehome ran the 2U server on Ubuntu and while the experience wasn't as smooth as it could have been, it was undoubtedly worth it. The Arm is slowly becoming a great matchup for Intel's Xeon and AMD's Epyc and with Amazon preparing the fourth generation of its Graviton family of processors, there's never been a better time to give Arm a try.