Tom Metro wrote: > It's not so clear to me what the compelling applications are for this. > At "only" 1 GHz per CPU I don't think "supercomputer" is a compelling > option.
High density, low power data center servers is another possibility, like HP's "Redstone" servers: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/01/hp_redstone_calxeda_servers/ ...server cluster that makes use of the EnergyCore ARM RISC server chip just announced by upstart Calxeda. The hyperscale server effort is known as Project Moonshot, and the first server platform to be created under the project is known as Redstone... The ECX-1000 processors that are the first in the EnergyCore products are 32-bit chips that will come in two-core and four-core variants. They include memory, I/O, and storage controllers and an embedded Layer 2 switch fabric on the chip, which means you can just wire a 4GB DDR3 memory stick to one, slap on some I/O ports, plug these babies into a passive backplane, and you have interconnected server nodes that take the place of rack servers and top-of-rack switches. HP can cram three rows of these ARM boards, with six per row, for a total of 72 server nodes, in a half-width 2U slot, like this [see photo: http://regmedia.co.uk/2011/10/31/hp_redstone_server_tray.jpg ] ...you can put four of these trays in the chassis...That gives you 288 server nodes in a 4U rack space, or 72 servers per rack unit. A more traditional x86-based cluster doing the same amount of work would only require 400 two-socket Xeon servers, but it would take up 10 racks of space, have 1,600 cables, burn 91 kilowatts, and cost $3.3m. The big, big caveat is, of course, that you need a workload that can scale well on a modestly clocked (1.1GHz or 1.4GHz), four-core server chip that only thinks in 32-bits and only has 4GB of memory. A blurb on this in Technology Review (where I first heard of it) says "Calxeda...claims that its servers draw five watts when operating and only half a watt when idle..." That's for a 4-core chip I presume (the TR article doesn't specify, but I assume both articles are talking about the same chips; and I assume by "server" they meant processor, because the latter part of the sentence compares it to a "conventional server processor that draws 160 watts when operating")), so the Epiphany beats it if they can do 16-cores at 2 watts. -Tom _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list Hardwarehacking@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
