Linus upgraded his main machine to an AMD Threadripper 3970x, a USD$2000 flagship processor from AMD.
He says that his “allmodconfig” test builds are now 3 times faster! Well, according to AMD, the chip renders “time irrelevant” but you’ll probably need a lot of time to save up for those $2000!
Linus hints in the same post about moving to an ARM processor in the not too distant future. Interesting times ahead. AMD definitely mixed-up the processor market with their successful Ryzen architecture. Intel’s generation on generation improvements had become somewhat unspectacular the last few years.
For those with no $2000 to spare, you could build yourself a cheap little Linux desktop with an ARM powered Raspberry Pi4 for less than $100. You can find whole kits on ebay and elsewhere. They run with Raspberry Pi OS (Previously Raspbian), a Debian based OS, by default, but Ubuntu has also stepped up support for the system. A new version with 8GB Ram was also announced recently.
Time’s up!
Mike
