System76 introduced the Thelio Astra workstation with a 128-core Ampere Altra Arm chip

System76 has announced the Thelio Astra desktop workstation, designed primarily for creating software for the automotive sector. The peculiarity of the new product is the use of a processor with Arm architecture.

It is noted that most modern cars use on-board equipment equipped with Arm chips. Thanks to Thelio Astra, software developers for Arm platforms will be able to abandon the use of emulators, which are necessary when working on computers with x86 processors. This will speed up and make it more convenient to create new software products for the transport industry.

Image source: System76

The workstation is based on an Ampere Altra processor with 128 cores. Installed professional graphics accelerator NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada. The amount of DDR4-3200 RAM can reach 512 GB.

There are two M.2 connectors for PCIe 4.0 SSDs with a capacity of up to 8 TB each. The computer is equipped with two 10GbE network ports and one 1GbE port, as well as a dedicated 1GbE management port. Power is provided by an 850W unit with 80 Plus Gold certification. Dimensions are 438x247x372 mm.

It is possible to display images simultaneously on several monitors via three DisplayPort interfaces, an HDMI connector and an analog D-Sub connector. There are also four USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports. It talks about the use of an effective air cooling system. The workstations are hand-assembled in a US facility. The OS can be Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. Thelio Astra will go on sale on November 12 at an estimated price of $3,300.