Back to working on FPGA stuff today, interspersed with working up a plan for the new workstation.
Given how obscenely long it takes to run an FPGA build (for this moderately complex design, but mostly with much iteration required to resolve timing constraints), I think I end up going for a top-of-the-line Ryzen 7 this time. The gain in productivity should be well worth it.
Probably the B450 chipset, and a micro-ATX form factor - so, a mini-tower case. Haven't decided yet whether I really need to have an optical drive poking through the front panel; a USB optical drive atop my desk (as needed) might make more sense. Motherboard selection will be strongly influenced by availability, but I'm looking for something with a couple of PCIe slots beyond the one for the video card, at least one M.2 NVMe slot, and maybe built-in WiFi that plays nice with Linux (it'll be relying on the WiFi until I get the house wired for gigabit Ethernet, but I have the option of plugging in a PCIe WiFi card - not so much a USB dongle, as the dual-band ones aren't supported well under Linux at this point).
Based on current RAM usage and the likelihood of having multiple VMs running concurrently on the new system (mainly to support legacy tools, stable development platforms, and suchlike), I think I'd better go for 32 GB of RAM (DDR4 3200).
For an SSD, probably one-each 2TB M.2 NVMe module, so I can store not only the tools (/opt stuff) and VM images but also the development working copies locally, with working copies being backed up to the file server on a regular basis*. I'll have to give data organization some careful thought.
In the video-card department, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (from whatever card vendor) looks to be a decent compromise - not so expensive and power-hungry as the fancy gaming cards, but with plenty of capability for 3D CAD and suchlike.
Looks like a 500W power supply ought to keep it all running, and I'll probably go for a modular model this time, especially if I end up going with the mini-tower case; no point stowing a bunch of unused cables in such a cramped little box.
Still dithering over which distro to use; while I (mostly) like Linux Mint on my laptop, I'm thinking Kubuntu might be a better choice for the workstation, for various reasons of my own. Vanilla Debian, alas, tend to be lacking in latest'n'greatest libraries and utilities, and software vendors that officially support Linux at all tend to support Ubuntu.
Ah, well. Looks like the test build of the re-arranged FPGA code finished; time to start making actual changes.
* Clarification: Working copies get checked in to the Subversion server (which currently lives in Dallas) when I'm good and ready. Backing them up to the local file server (and its backups) guards against loss of work that I'm not yet ready to check in.
Comments