The BC250 is what AMD calls an APU (Accelerated Processing Unit). It combines a GPU and a CPU in one unit and was originally built to serve as the heart of certain Samsung rackmount servers. If you know where to find cheap surplus BC250 units, you can put them to good use in your AI work. [akandr] indicates.
The first thing you need to understand is how to get the individual BC250 APUs up and running. It’s virtually a complete system-on-chip, combining a Zen 2 CPU with a Cyan Skillfish RDNA 1.5 GPU. However, it was originally intended to run inside a rackmount server unit rather than a standalone machine. It must be connected to power and some sort of cooling solution to work.
From there, it’s a software issue. [akandr] We’ll show you how to run AI workflows on BC250 using Ollama and Vulkan, and we’ll also cover some useful hacks to improve performance, like disabling the GUI and tweaking the CPU governor. Although the hardware is available in different models depending on the purpose, APU resources must be carefully managed to get the most out of them. Thankfully, it’s all covered in a guide on GitHub.
It has already been confirmed that these AMD APUs have been repurposed for gaming purposes. Unfortunately, word has already gotten out about its performance and prices have increased significantly in response to demand. Still, if you manage to win BC250 and accomplish something great for yourself, be sure to let us know on the tipline.
