Review request: Gigabyte MA10-ST0 Intel Atom C3958 SoC
- Thread starter ullbeking
- Start date
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The new "home" ultimate AIO SoC 
16C / 10Gig / 16 Drives / Embedded OS Storage / DDR4
So much awesome in such a tiny package
16C / 10Gig / 16 Drives / Embedded OS Storage / DDR4So much awesome in such a tiny package
Thus far I like it. There are a few nuances.
One example is power. With the SM boards, you can use 20/24-pin ATX power and nothing else or DC input. On this, you need both ATX and CPU power connectors which is strange for such a low power SoC.
The physical layout is a bit rough. For example, the power connectors have the latch to the outside of the board. That is fine in larger cases but 1U designs where the top edge of the board is against the PSU makes it a very tight fit.
CPU benchmarks and some power consumption numbers posted Intel Atom C3958 16-Core Top End Embedded QAT Linux Benchmarks and Review
The main thing I'm curious about (same as with the SM C3000 boards), is that even though they have 16 cores, is that really really the sweet spot. I've seen a few of these types of boards before (particularly Xeon-D) where, although they go up to a max of 16c, the sweet spot is really about 8c. Do you think there's anything similar about the C3000?
@ullbeking what do you mean by "sweet spot?"
Adding 8 more cores for around 10W TDP is darn good compared to the 8C variant.
Adding 8 more cores for around 10W TDP is darn good compared to the 8C variant.
I remember discussing factors that contribute to the sweet with you once (we were looking to see whether the cache scales as the # of cores increases, and IIRC it didn't). Also, the initial cost of a 16C variant is significantly more expensive that the 8C.
I also had similar discussions in r/homelab on Reddit.
These are only a few examples I can think of right now, but I'm sure there must be others too.
I think cost is the big concern. Architecturally the 16 core is not bad, albeit latency between cores is not even.
The bigger concern is that at $450 for the CPU if you need general purpose compute and virtualization there are better options.
Then again, this much performance and QAT in such a low power package is a major selling point.
The bigger concern is that at $450 for the CPU if you need general purpose compute and virtualization there are better options.
Then again, this much performance and QAT in such a low power package is a major selling point.