James Hamilton, once of Microsoft/Live, now Amazon, has a paper well
worth reading: http://mvdirona.com/jrh/TalksAndPapers/JamesHamilton_CEMS.pdf
He argues (among many other things) that cores per system is increasing
much faster than memory bandwidth, resulting in cores stalled on memory
access, effectively canceling some or all of the potential gain of
additional cores. Following this line of reasoning, he argues that more
cheaper, "balanced" servers have more bang per capital and energy buck
than more expensive servers. This is a pretty good counter to Brian's
argument on very high number of cores. The logical extension of
Hamilton's argument is a server sled with a single power supply and six
expendable, low cost, low power servers in a 1U package.
The software architecture ramifications are pretty serious. If Hamilton
is right, scale up is all but dead. Cycles per energy buck favors
slower processors that balance with memory bandwidth and where
reliability comes from software, not hardware.
Anyone want to take on the implications for drizzle?
--
Jim Starkey
President, NimbusDB, Inc.
978 526-1376
_______________________________________________
Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~drizzle-discuss
Post to : [email protected]
Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~drizzle-discuss
More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
