System76 sells many desktop and laptop computers built for Linux, from high-end workstations to affordable laptops. The company has now revealed its first ARM-powered desktop, and it might be a first in the computer industry.

System76 has announced the Thelio Astra, a desktop workstation powered by a 128-core ARM-based Ampere Altra processor, instead of a more typical x86-based Intel or AMD processors. It can be configured with up to 512GB DDR4 memory, an NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada GPU, 8GB of NVMe storage, and dual 25 Gigabit Ethernet.

The Thelio Astra is primarily intended for car software development, because most of them use ARM-based systems, and that’s a faster process if the desktop workstation is also ARM-based. For example, the ARM code wouldn’t have to run in a slow emulator during testing, and compiling projects for ARM would (in most cases) be faster without cross-compilation. The Thelio Astra also still runs regular desktop Linux, which is more practical for some work than Apple’s Mac Studio and Mac Pro, which are also ARM-based but use macOS instead of Linux.

This might be the first desktop PC that combines an ARM CPU with a dedicated (and replicable) GPU. There aren’t very many ARM-powered desktops at all, and the ones that do exist mostly have a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) design that combines both components. The Thelio Astra is a better example of how ARM processors could eventually replace x86 CPUs, while retaining modular and upgradable hardware design. By comparison, all Apple Silicon Mac computers and Snapdragon X Elite Windows laptops have the CPU and GPU on the same chipset.

Interestingly, the Thelio Astra will ship with Ubuntu Linux out of the box, rather than System76’s own Pop!_OS Linux distribution. There’s not currently a version of Pop!_OS for ARM computers, and the company said on a call with How-To Geek that work on the COSMIC desktop is taking priority for now.

System76 said in its announcement, “automotive software should be developed and tested natively on arm64 architecture to minimize cross-compilation, cross-platform debugging, and avoid unexpected behaviors. With accelerated development and testing on native hardware, Thelio Astra gets us closer to ubiquitous autonomy and our software-defined vehicle future. Developers can greatly simplify their environments, ‘shift-left’ their testing with “arm virtual hardware” instead of emulation.”

The Thelio Astra will be released on November 12, 2024, at a starting price of $3,299. You can learn more on the System76 website.

Source: System76