If you ever get into Docker/Kubernetes, being able to spin up a local cluster for testing is a pretty big deal. Having that running in the background and not impacting your usual workload is huge.
I've been testing a Kubernetes cluster built on 32-core AMD servers and it's unreal the workloads you can throw at them. I'm used to 4 or 8-core Xeon chips and this is a whole different game.
That's true, but memory/IO is a much bigger issue in this scenario than processing power. While running a cluster in VMs, I'm frequently limited by IO (and if your VMs use more memory than it's physically available, you'll quickly descent into swap hell) well before my CPUs register a significant uptick in usage.
And, mind you, my workstation is 4 year old Xeon with 64 gigs of memory and reasonably fast (but not amazing) SATA SSD.
On a side note, I work more and more from a couple of i3 and i5 laptops and only use the workstation to do heavy lifting tasks, such as replicating these more exotic setups.
I really hope the 3000-series Threadripper is 8-channel like its server counterpart. 8 16GB DIMMs gets you 128GB, and a significant amount of memory bandwidth. You also have enough PCI-E lanes to either stripe or partition your I/O in such a way to work around any major bottlenecks.
It's definitely going to start at quad-channel + 64 PCI-E lanes like the existing sRT4 platform as it's almost certainly going to have sTR4 socket-compatible SKUs. Rumors are there will also be an 8-channel + 128 lane one as well. Supposedly the quad-channel will be the platform with overclocking support, the more "enthusiast" platform, and the 8-channel one will really more be the workstation platform.
My biggest hope is that you will be able to get 256 or 512GB of RAM with those. The biggest limitation for the previous one for me in comparison to Xeons was that you could only got 128GB of RAM.
For simple things it doesn't matter, but if you're bringing up a complex application that has a dozen server components and putting it under load, it does matter.
I've been testing a Kubernetes cluster built on 32-core AMD servers and it's unreal the workloads you can throw at them. I'm used to 4 or 8-core Xeon chips and this is a whole different game.