Hello all,
I like to underline what James Hamilton describes. We have done some tests with Intel Atom boards recently and our results are quite promising. With a $60 board (Atom dualcore 1.6Ghz) you get about 1/3 the "raw" CPU performance of an state-of-the-art Core2Duo (2.66ghz) (speaking of the performance of a single core) -- but the Atom uses 8W to achieve this instead of ~120W of the Core2Duo (!). There are already "mini-clusters" of said Intel Atom CPUs on the way. They will change the way we do computing IMHO. Just my 2 cents, Martin Jim Starkey wrote: > 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? > > > _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~drizzle-discuss Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~drizzle-discuss More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
