AMD EPYC Rome has finally reached a price point where I can afford to play with it. My main goal is just to work with the hardware and see what I can do with it as a learning tool. This is a platform/form factor I’ve always wanted to get my hands on.
What’s important to me is hardware compatibility and software capability. I will explain my concerns.
For hardware, I’m not married to it if someone has a better suggestion, but I was looking at the HPE DL385 G10 since i have hands on experience with the DL380p G8, and DL380 G9. According to the documentation this will support up to the 64 core Rome 7702. Has that changed since this was written? Firmware updates? I see the DL385 also has a G10+ and G10+ v2 which bring support for the 7742 and then EPYC Milan respectively but the old G10 comes in at the lowest price point and I’m not seeing a massive gain between the 7702 & 7742 but the price tag. I also see though they skipped the 76*2 series. Is there any particular reason for that?
On the software side of things is where I’m more worried. My plan is 2x64 core CPUs for a total of 256 threads. OS is going to be dependent on software capability. So I was thinking either Debian 12 Bookworm, or PROXMOX but the highest I’ve ever operated either was on 88 threads.
I don’t have a great understanding of how a kernel works but have been informed of certain limitations that can arise in extreme circumstances. How well would a current Linux kernel handle 256 threads? Has anyone tested something like this on Debian 12 or PROXMOX? I’m not married to these either if I have to go a little more obscure like FreeBSD or Redhat so long as it can run the programs I want it to because I’d like to put it to work in high computation tasks like F@H and BOINC.
TLDR:
I love playing with enterprise gear and want to explore rack mount EPYC Rome but am unsure about compatibility working with 2x64-core SKU’s for both hardware and OS/kernel. Looking for thoughts, input, advice, experience. Thank you.