In terms of repurposing old computer hardware, it would be hard to pick a project that would bring a bigger smile to my face than retrofitting an Intel Core2Duo-based Sun workstation to use modern AMD EPYC platform. It’s the best of both worlds, modern hardware in a chassis with perhaps the best logo in all of tech.
AMD
The AWS ARM Chip That Wasn’t
AWS announced the availability of new EC2 instances powered by a Amazon-developed ARM processor called Graviton. But it turns out the company originally approached AMD to produce the CPU.
Radeon Returns to the Data Center
AMD returned to the data center CPU market in a big way with their Epyc platform in 2017. But what about competing with Nvidia on the GPU side? The release of the Vega 20-based Radeon Instinct cards signals that AMD is ready to try.
AMD’s Second Generation Threadripper Isn’t Quite EPYC
AMD announced their second generation Threadripper CPU, now with up to 32-cores on a single socket. This would seem to be a direct consumer adaptation of their EPYC server platform. But interestingly, the underly consumer TR4 platform may limit performance due to memory limitations.
Bad Moon Ryzen | Gestalt IT Rundown – March 14, 2018
The Gestalt IT Rundown looks at the IT news of the week with hosts Tom Hollingsworth and Rich Stroffolino. Today they talked about the death of Broadcom-Qualcomm, cryptomining on your calendar, AMD CPU security flaws, and Pi Day!
Intel CPU Flaw May Lead to Winter of Discontent
Winter seems to bring out the worst Intel processor bugs. Last year it was Atom CPUs causing devices to brick. This year it’s something even more serious.
Intel Packs Radeon RX Vega Graphics into Core i7-8809G
Intel just released more details on their upcoming CPU with Radeon graphics. The details answer many of the “what” and “how” questions about the chip, but we’re still missing “why”.
Gestalt IT Rundown, December 20, 2017
This week on the Gestalt IT Rundown, Tom Hollingsworth and Rich Stroffolino discuss what the biggest stories of 2017 were, and how they will effect IT in the New Year.
Asus B250 Mining Expert Motherboard with 19 PCI-E Slots
Do you mine cryptocurrency? Do you have eight AMD and Nvidia cards? Want to have them all plugged into a single motherboard with PCIe slots to spare? Asus just release the motherboard of your dreams. Behold the grotesque nightmare of expansion that is the Asus B250 Mining Expert!
Quick Look at AMD’s Radeon RX VEGA 64 for Crypto Mining
AMD has now officially released their much anticipated Radeon RX VEGA 64 GPU, so of course the first thing to test is its capabilities in crypto mining. There were many rumors about the performance of the VEGA 64 regarding crypto mining, especially with its new HBM2 memory, but in reality, it does not seem like it will be the best option for miners. The out-of-the-box VEGA 64 posts a hashrate for Ethereum mining of only 31-32 MHS despite running with a fairly high power consumption. It also runs very hot, and the higher the temperature goes, the lower the performance drops.