[kwlug-disc] Small, ARM64-based computers (was: Raspberry pi 4)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ronald Barnes (ron at ronaldbarnes.ca):

[Pine64 Quartz SoC, https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64 :]

> That PCIe expansion slot is intriguing!

In sub-model A.  There's also sub-model B, which offers M.2.

> The value of which cannot be overstated.  Adding expansion storage
> to my rPi 4 would be more expensive than anticipated and somewhat of
> a hassle.

The 8GB LPDDR4 RAM option is likewise getting up into real-computer
territory, and I note that sub-model A also has one (1) SATA 3.0 header.
The immediately preceding ROCKPro64 SoC
(https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/ROCKPro64) also merits respect, but maxes
out at 4GB LPDDR4 RAM.

I keep watching the ARM single-board computer marketplace for units
fully suited to home-server usage, and ideally want the hardware to
include:

o  8 GB or greater RAM, so that I can comfortably run a pair of VMs
   under a hardened small host system.  There are certainly other
   ways to do this, but the two-VMs model provides a production server
   host alongside an in-development beta host that will be rolled out
   on flag day by simply promoting (re-IPing) the beta to production, 
   and starting a new beta VM.

o  RAID1 redundant main storage on something better/faster/more-reliable than 
   USB 3.0-attached or microSD or eMMC storage.  Like, guys?  NVMe SSD
   storage on an M.2 slot is a terrific idea, but why not two slots, please?  

o  Fanless, silent, and low-power, which is where ARM64 helps.

The generally meritorious hardkernel.com ODROID SoCs mentioned upthread 
share with the Pine64 being less limited than the RPis, but to my
knowledge none of their units yet ticks all of my checkboxes for an
in-home server platform.

The marketplace doesn't recognise the existence of a home-server niche
(which is understandable, as those of us who want robust computing
infrastructure at home are "rara avibus".  Over the last decade, the
niche that seemed closest to filling home-server needs, it seemes to me,
has been the HTPC (home theatre PC) one, like low-power AMD-based
mini-ITX boxes with a pair of SATA drives.  With the rise of ARM64 /
aarch64, we are now seeing additional possibles.