Create page for development workstation

pages/development_workstation.md

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+---
+title: Development Workstation
+layout: page
+---
+
+# Development Workstation
+
+The right equipment will help significantly during development. The wrong
+equipment can be incredibly painful.
+
+## Operating system
+
+We have standardized on Linux for Nerves development, as well as for firmware
+development in general. The architecture should be `x86_64` to avoid issues
+with cross-compilation and host tooling.
+
+Linux has become well-supported by many vendors, and provides tools and
+paradigms that make it easier to develop software. Since Nerves firmware runs
+embedded Linux, Linux experience can translate between the desktop, server,
+and embedded.
+
+The Linux distribution is less critical. The important part is for a developer
+to be proficient with their Linux environment. For developers who are not yet
+experienced with Linux, we recommend starting with [Ubuntu Desktop](https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop)
+due to its wide support and ability to find information about it easily with a
+web search.
+
+## Virtualization
+
+It is a good idea to create the development environment inside of a virtual
+machine. This offers several benefits:
+
+- Isolation of development data from business software.
+- Isolated networking.
+- Dedicated disk encryption on the virtual machine's virtual drive.
+- Periodic snapshots that can be restored in case of a disaster.
+- Portability to other computers in case of hardware failure or upgrades.
+
+We prefer [VMware Workstation Pro](https://www.vmware.com/products/workstation-pro.html) for virtualization. A free alternative
+we have had good experience with is [Oracle VirtualBox](https://www.virtualbox.org/),
+but it is more limited.
+
+## Hardware selection
+
+For application firmware development that does not involve compiling Nerves
+systems, a computer with above-average specs will likely be sufficient. This
+will be the case if a platform development team creates the artifacts for an
+application development team.
+
+For Nerves system development (platform development), we prefer [AMD Threadripper](https://www.amd.com/en/processors/ryzen-threadripper-pro)
+workstations. These high performance workstations are capable of compiling
+several Nerves systems per hour from a clean build, significantly reducing the
+amount of time it takes to iterate through the development of a Nerves system.
+
+### More cores or faster clock?
+
+When looking at Threadripper CPUs, there is a point where you have to choose
+between significantly more cores at the cost of significantly lower base clock
+speed. More cores will benefit parallel workloads, whereas a faster clock is
+better when workloads are single-threaded or don't parallelize well.
+
+So is Nerves system compilation parallel or single-threaded? Well, unfortunately
+it's a mix of both. Linux and Erlang are packages that support multi-core
+compilation. A lot of the ancillary packages tend to compile single-threaded.
+
+> ⚠️ **Trap**
+> 
+> *"I can write a script that compiles the ancillary packages in parallel to
+> utilize the idle cores!"*
+> 
+> Buildroot already has a setting to enable parallel builds. The catch isn't
+> compiling packages in parallel, it's setting up the dependency tree between
+> packages so that the right ones can compile in parallel. Nerves just hasn't
+> been optimized for this yet. It's a topic we occasionally revisit, but in
+> general having the right workstation has mitigated most of this pain point.
+
+The following diagram illustrates the difference between cores and clock speed
+for the Threadripper Pro 7000 series. For this CPU series, a good balance
+between cores and clock speed is the 7975WX 32 core 4.0GHz CPU. Also note that
+as of January 2024, VMware supports passing through a maximum of 32 cores to a
+virtual machine.
+
+![](development_workstation/cores_vs_base_clock.png)
+
+| Model | Cores | Base Clock |
+| ----- | ----- | ---------- |
+| 7945WX | 12 | 4.7 |
+| 7955WX | 16 | 4.5 |
+| 7965WX | 24 | 4.2 |
+| 7975WX | 32 | 4.0 |
+| 7985WX | 64 | 3.2 |
+| 7995WX | 96 | 2.5 |