
Intel Launches Atom C3000 SoCs: Up to 16 Cores for NAS, Servers, Vehicles - benologist
http://www.anandtech.com/show/11144/intel-launches-16core-atom-c3000-cpus-for-nas-servers-vehicles
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stephengillie
Interesting specs for an IoT device. It looks more powerful than most current
home PCs or laptops. How would you feel about hosting a small cloud or
Kubernetes cluster on your coffee maker?

    
    
      up to 16 low power x86 cores at up to 2.2GHz
      fully support Intel’s VT-d hardware virtualization
      up to 64 GB of single-channel DDR4-1866 or DDR3L-1600 ECC memory
      PCIe 3.0 x16 controller (with x2, x4 and x8 bifurcation), 
      16 SATA 3.0 ports
      four 10 GbE controllers
      four USB 3.0 ports
      different TDPs starting at 8.5 W
    

With 4x10GbE controllers, I almost want some sort of government-mandated
firewall to be built in.

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Retric
These are fairly anemic processors so I suspect you would be disappointed
trying to run a desktop OS with one. Let alone go head to head with a modern
PC.

~~~
stephengillie
I'm posting from an older Thinkpad with a Core 2 Duo. Comparing this to a
C2750, they appear comparable[0]. This system runs Windows 10 fine, and so I
don't see why the C2750 (and C3000) would not as well. Granted, an i5
outperforms them both.

[0] [http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Duo-P8600-vs-Intel-
Atom-...](http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Duo-P8600-vs-Intel-Atom-C2750)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
> This system runs Windows 10 fine

Do you have any tips on how? At work I have a brand new Dell Precision 5510
with Win10 that I had to upgrade to 32 GB RAM when using two full-HD external
monitors (internal 4K display off) running Firefox and Autodesk Inventor,
because on 16GB it would randomly crap out and bluescreen (with the new
useless "sad smiley" type BSOD). Mind you, FF and Inventor were only using
~6GB RAM total.

~~~
wott
Er... I can't help you for I have never used a computer with more than 4 GB.
And I was running dual monitors in the days when 256MB was a very decent
setup. You _had to upgrade to 32 GB RAM_?

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I guess I should distinguish between when I had bluescreens, and when Win10
crashed the display manager saying "your system is low on memory". And only
when running on dual monitors, never on the internal 4K display (which oddly
enough has more total pixels). The "out of memory" errors led me to upgrade to
32 GB.

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ksec
Sounds like a good candidate for Next Gen Time Capsule... if that it ever get
updated

The Price at $27 means most entry level NAS wont be using it. The starting
price for any NAS using it will likely start at $300.

I really do hope, Home Server, NAS catches up as a trend instead of us relying
everything on the "Cloud".

~~~
petra
The gross margins on NAS are so high? why?

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tracker1
They aren't that high... there's tooling costs (which are pretty fixed)
regardless of if you sell 100 or 100000 devices. You also have some pretty
high software costs to ensure everything works together well. There are far
fewer NAS boxes sold than laptops or desktops, so they need higher margins to
cover other fixed costs.

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mtgx
Qualcomm will have a 48-core competitor later this year, and at 10nm to boot:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/10918/qualcomm-demos-48core-
ce...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/10918/qualcomm-demos-48core-
centriq-2400-server-soc-in-action-begins-sampling)

~~~
hsivonen
I bet the Intel chip will get kernel security updates for longer.

~~~
awill
Not if RHEL8 supports Arm

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im_down_w_otp
I'm highly suspicious that these could end up in autonomous cars for anything
other than head-unit duty, and you don't need anything as powerful as this for
that task.

They'd have to have built the thing to a standard strict enough to be a
component in an ASIL-D rated system, which there's no evidence has actually
happened.

Unless they just mean for autonomous test mules and/or captive fleets.

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ChuckMcM
For some reason I thought they were abandoning the 3000 line. The specs
certainly make for a great NAS device, 16 SATA ports is a healthy amount of
storage behind dual parity RAID. 64GB of ECC RAM that works, and presumably
you can peel off a PCIe x4 lane for boot media in an M.2 slot. I could see
replacing my current FreeNAS box with that if it continued to be as quiet.

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Tepix
Online.net currently uses the 8-core Intel C2750 Atoms for some of their dirt
cheap dedicated servers. I hope to see them offer some affordable 16-core Atom
servers soon.

Minecraft makes use of many cores and my kids are complaining about server lag
:-)

~~~
braum
How do they make a profit with €8.99mo, even with €20 setup, and make a
profit?

especially when they include guaranteed unmetered 1Gbit/sec and unmetered
traffic?

~~~
cknight
I think perhaps the "Scaleway" brand name is less about what their users can
do with their products, and more about what their business model is.

As for their hardware, I believe they have designed all of the physical
servers themselves, so they'll contain nothing they don't need.
[https://www.scaleway.com/features/hardware/](https://www.scaleway.com/features/hardware/)

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znpy
I know it might be a niche, but I would love to see 16-core cpu for "hardcore"
home servers.

~~~
throwawayish
E5-2xxx.

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penglish1
Here's hoping they all last longer than 18 months.

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fillskills
Asking people with hardware background - How hard would it to build a router
with NAS, API to talk to Nest etc, smoke alarm, security cam? And what would
be the cost of such a device?

~~~
aseipp
It's probably going to cost you time, more than hardware, I'd honestly
suspect? Any simple Atom-based NAS should really have enough "oomph" for like,
a REST HTTP API that you can talk with. I have a 4x core C2000 about a foot
from me that would do great. You can piece one together for a cheap few
hundred $ (like $300 can probably get you something decent). But you're going
to have to program all the shit together, that's consuming.

I've been looking at this for my home. Realistically I've just been spending a
lot of time so far just modeling my database schemas so I can eventually put
APIs on top of it all to talk with.

Mostly just make sure you pick some devices you can think you can interface
with, have been reverse engineered, or get ready to reverse it yourself I
suppose (which might be easier than you think, considering how bad embedded
security is)...

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ramshanker
I wish so much to have these small processors in Raspberry Style form factor.

~~~
seanp2k2
If you're into tiny PCs, COMs, SBCs, etc, I've added
[http://linuxgizmos.com](http://linuxgizmos.com) to Feedly list and find that
it's a decent way to stay current with that market.

~~~
voltagex_
I also like [http://www.cnx-software.com/](http://www.cnx-software.com/) for
this, but I don't think there are any ARM boards that approach the power of
these (or the previous C27xx) chips.

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runeks
I hope they intend to stick one in a NUC. I would love to switch out my old
4-core NUC with a 16-core beast.

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imaginenore
The price is the most impressive. $27 in bulk. $100 buys you 60 cores.

I would love to see some Blender render benchmark running on it.

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revelation
Intel Atoms are utterly useless for that. I'd wager they are useless for most
anything that isn't memcpy-bound, so I wonder what makes them put 16 of them
into one package.

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MichaelGG
For memory-bound apps are they sort of useful? For instance, A packet
forwarding system that reads a packet, does 3 main-memory lookups, then
forwards or drops?

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snuxoll
Now I'm wondering how one of the 16-core chips would handle VyOS...

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gonzo
Won't be any faster than what you have today.

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snuxoll
Right now I've got a little EdgeRouter X - it would probably be faster.

~~~
seanp2k2
Hard to compare against the Cavium Octeon. x86 general purpose vs MIPS64 with
dedicated offload hardware...really depends on the use-case. I have an ERLite
and AFAICT it competes with stuff way above it price-wise, e.g.
[https://store.netgate.com/ADI/RCC-
VE-2440-board.aspx](https://store.netgate.com/ADI/RCC-VE-2440-board.aspx)

I'd rather run PFSense, but it's not worth an extra $200+ for just my home
use.

