VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) on ASUS NUC 15 Pro (Cyber Canyon)

With the release of ASUS’s 15th Generation NUCs powered by Intel’s new Core Ultra 2 processors (codenamed Arrow Lake), Intel has made yet another architectural change by dropping the long-standing Hyper-Threading feature from the Performance cores (P-cores), first introduced over two decades ago.

While the verdict is still out regarding this change, I was able to get hands on with an ASUS NUC 15 Pro (formally known as Cyber Canyon) to see what impacts it might have for running ESXi and even VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), since that has been a frequent question from many since VCF 9.0 went GA last week.

Compute

There are a number of Core Ultra 3, 5 & 7 SKUS that are available with the ASUS NUC 15 Pro, the one I have contains Intel Core Ultra 7 255H, which is comprised of the following core types:

6 P-Cores
8 E-Cores
2 LPE-Cores

Simliar to previous generations of ASUS NUCs that contain the three types of cores: P-Cores, E-Cores & LPE-Cores, assuming the system BIOS allows for it, you can only disable either P or E-Cores, but not the LPE-Cores. This means for those considering ESXi on the ASUS NUC 15 Pro, you will have non-uniform CPU cores and you will need to apply the required ESXi kernel setting (see below) for the system to properly boot.

For memory, the ASUS NUC 15 Pro officially supports 96GB (2 x SODIMM) using the new 48GB DDR5 non-binary SO-DIMM memory modules. Having said that, the new 64GB DDR5 SODIMM modules work perfectly fine and that will give you a maximum of 128GB of memory!

Network

The ASUS NUC 15 Pro includes a single Intel i226 (2.5GbE) network adaptor that is fully recognized by ESXi 8.x/9.x and later. If you purchase the "Tall" SKU, as the one I have, you can add an additional 2.5GbE via an expansion module, giving you another network adaptor.

For additional networking, you can also use the two Thunderbolt 4 ports with these Thunderbolt 10GbE solutions for ESXi or use USB-based networking with the popular USB Network Native Driver for ESXi Fling, supporting over two dozen types of USB-based network adapters.

Storage

The ASUS 15 NUC Pro supports 1 x M.2 PCIe x4 Gen 4 (2280) and 1 x M.2 PCIe x4 Gen 4 (2242) using the M-Key interface, which is different compared to the earlier Intel NUC 13 pro which only supported an M.2 SATA using a B-Key interface. This means you can have two NVMe devices that can then be used in various combinations from vSAN OSA/ESA or local VMFS on one device and NVMe Tiering for the second device! Going with the "Tall" SKU, you will have an additional SATA interface supporting 2.5" SSD or HDD, giving you more storage deployment options.

Graphics

I was not very optimistic about the integrated graphics (iGPU) on the ASUS NUC 15 Pro, given the previous generation ASUS NUC 14 Pro had issues with ESXi passthrough and was not fully functional. To my pleasent surprise, that was NOT the case with ASUS NUC 15 Pro and using standard Ubuntu 24.04 without any additional tweaks, I was able to successfully passthrough iGPU and use it! As you can see from the screenshot below, both the i915 and xe drivers are active, where as in previous generations, only the i915 was active.

To ensure the iGPU was actually usable, I disable the default virtual graphics device (SVGA) and left only the iGPU and then ran glmark, which made use of the iGPU! 😍

AI Accelerator

The updated Intel NPU on the ASUS NUC 15 Pro also works flawlessly as it did in the last generation, when it was first introduced. It looks like Ubuntu 24.04 is still the highest version due to available Intel NPU drivers, which you can follow this blog post HERE for configuring the Intel NPU for passthrough consumption.

ESXi

As mentioned earlier, due to the non-uniform CPU cores that will exists across P, E and LPE-Cores, you will need to apply the required ESXi kernel option to properly boot the system or it will PSOD.