Supermicro unveiled an ARM-based server – the ARS-210M-NR – in December 2022 and Home service took it for a spin, and loaded with four Nvidia A16 cards. The test server came with a 128-core Ampere Altra Max Arm processor, running at 3GHz, with 16 DDR4 memory modules (512GB memory total), two 25Gb SPF28 ports, 16 2.5″ slots and a pair of 2Kw PSUs, nicely packaged in Tool-less construction.
The cherry on the cake is the Ampere-based quartet of Nvidia A16 graphics cards. Each card comes with 64GB of GDDR6 ECC memory and four GPUs mounted on a full-length, dual-slot, passively cooled PCB. The A16 isn’t Nvidia’s most powerful data center card; This would be the A100; However, it hits a sweet spot for service providers looking to get as many simultaneous users as possible on a single board.
In terms of pure performance, each of these GPUs has half the number of CUDA cores of a Geforce RTX 3050, so yes, it should be able to run the legendary Crysis without too many problems, which means that in theory, it could You have 16 iterations of one of the most taxing games to run concurrently. You only need to create 16 virtual machines And download 16 copies of calamity.
No pricing details provided but given that The A16 retails for around $3,000 and a Fully loaded server With similar credentials costing around $10,000, you’d expect to drop north of $22,000 for such a system.
Cloud power
Now who would need such debauchery in power? For a start, cloud gaming is now mainstream (even if Google bailed out earlier this year when it stopped stadium) And it is the likes of the ARS-210M-NR that make it a reality.
Moreover, it is related to VDI (Video Desktop Infrastructure) for companies and organizations. rise of Hybrid work It acted as a catalyst for the adoption of Virtual Workstation (and Virtual PC) as Work from home It has become a reality for millions of users. And just one of those servers can house so many virtual machines (VMs); A recent test conducted by a cloud computing company Show Nutanix That two Nvidia A16 graphics cards can handle 128 virtual machines, which means four cards should be able to run 256.
Of course you would need to use a more powerful Altra Max CPU and more memory as well (Nutanix used 1.5TB RAM and two Intel Xeon Gold 6354s, each with 18 physical cores). Increased SaaS support for virtual GPUs across a wide range of applications (eg Photo shop or Chrome) Why dense servers with very high GPU counts have become a common sight.
Other apps like Website hosting You may benefit from a large CPU core count and that’s why VPS (Virtual Private Servers) It is now affordable with a price gap with Select servers And Metal solutions remain high.
Servethehome ran a 2U server on Ubuntu And while the experience wasn’t as smooth as it should have been, it was definitely worth it. Arm is slowly turning into a formidable opponent for both Intel’s Xeon and AMD’s Epyc and with Amazon gearing up for the fourth generation of… graviton CPU family, there’s never been a better time to try Arm.
