On 06/12/10 04:53, E.T wrote:
>> * Nick <[email protected]> [2010-06-11 12:55]:
>>> If you want low power consumption and low cost, I'd suggest a small
>>> PIII or Celeron based system, hard to beat for the price (usually,
>>> free!). IF the new, cool stuff has any real power savings, you are
>>> unlikely to ever recoup the initial cost over recycled hardware.
>
> it is a very bad idea, PIII low performance, low puissance, high hot, high
> electricity.
AGAIN, you are confusing "processors" for "systems".
I can show you PIII systems which idle at less than 30W of power.
Off-the-shelf, 100% conventional systems.
I can also show you PIII systems that draw more than 300W, and I
discarded one a while ago that probably could have maxed out at well
over 500w.
Hard numbers:
Compaq Deskpro EN PIII 800MHz
128M RAM
Onboard fxp
PCI slot "router card" (rl chip attached to five port switch,
exposes four ports to the back of machine. Nice for tiny offices)
unplugged the CDROM (saves a half watt or so)
CF flash card in adapter (most expensive parts!)
TWO unused PCI slots
dmesg below.
25w idle (power factor: 0.60, 42VA. Yes, that power factor (PF)
sucks. For those without an EE background, VA is what your
UPS/generator/power company must put out to power the device, Watts is
what the power company bills you for (at least in the US, I believe in
much of the rest of the world), Power Factor is the ratio between
them. At least some areas are trying to force PFs towards unity, so
that power generated and power billed for are closer to the same)
In order to top that, you will need one very efficient power supply on
the Atom machine. I have no doubt that the Atom chip and basic main
board draws less than that, but getting the second NIC and switch AND
power supply efficiencies to under 25W at the power cord will be
difficult.
>> that might be (I am not convinced tho) with the electricity price in
>> the US, but certainly isn't universal.
The calculations are.
Cost of money (i.e., interest rate), watts saved (if any), cost of a
kWh, initial costs, etc. Plug in your numbers, find out what the ROI
is. Add in what your AC costs are (watts in have to be removed, and
that's more watts to pump them out). Evaluate results.
Going simpler, ignoring cost of money, IF your Atom machine draws 50%
of the power of my PIII, my quickie calc indicates you will save
105kWh. If you also have to pay for AC, maybe double that number.
Granted, ROI (Return on Investment) isn't everything. There's also
coolness, there's fun, etc. If you are trying to implement 100
identical systems, recycling old hardware is probably more difficult
(=expensive) than buying new hardware. Low power rack mount equipment
is hard to find now (Dell used to make a PowerEdge 350 system, which
was basically just a cheap desktop with a very long BIOS POST (ta-da!
now it is a server!). Used a few of them in a past life, only had an
analog clamp-on ammeter at the time, but they appeared to draw under 60W.
If you want to talk about "power savings", get a wattmeter and quit
reading glossy sheets of one tiny part of the entire computer system.
The numbers will surprise you. (Fans ALONE on one Dell 1U system
draw over 50W at full speed. Hopefully, they aren't at full speed
very often. If my 40 year old 'fridge ever fails and I decide to buy
a new one, I'm getting a manual defrost unit)
For giggles, let's compare a soekris 4501:
486 133MHz
64M RAM
two NICs (yes, supposed to have three, but one failed, and I pried
the overheating chip off the board. Power savings!)
No switch
no expansion potential
only serial port is in use for console
1g CF storage
4W at idle. (similar power factor as the Compaq deskpro).
Yes, as configured, the Soekris wins hands-down for power. Even if
you add a five port mini-switch to balance things out, it will still
win. However, it is an anemic little thing. Home Use/Very Small
Office only...
My PIII system will pump a LOT of data. I've used lesser systems
(with a much better than rl(4) NIC) to filter a 45Mbps line on a 700
user network. The PCI bus will probably be a bottleneck before the
CPU will be. Looks like the referenced Atom board is pretty good in
this regard: appears to have a PCI-e slot and a couple decent on-board
gigabit NICs. Again, it is not the CPU, it's the surrounding hardware
that matters. IF you need and will use that much bandwidth, then yes,
THIS Atom board wins. However, at no point did I think you were
worrying about a large office, high-speed environment, sounds like you
are looking at a home environment.
Nick.
OpenBSD 4.7 (GENERIC) #552: Sun Mar 7 21:43:02 MST 2010
[email protected]:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
cpu0: Intel Pentium III ("GenuineIntel" 686-class) 798 MHz
cpu0:
FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,SSE
real mem = 132542464 (126MB)
avail mem = 119754752 (114MB)
mainbus0 at root
bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+ BIOS, date 06/06/02, BIOS32 rev. 0 @
0xe7300, SMBIOS rev. 2.3 @ 0xfd33c (47 entries)
bios0: vendor Compaq version "686P2 v3.13" date 06/06/2002
bios0: Compaq Deskpro
acpi0 at bios0: rev 0
acpi0: tables DSDT FACP SSDT SSDT SSDT APIC SSDT SSDT SSDT SSDT SSDT SSDT
acpi0: wakeup devices PCI0(S4) HUB_(S4) COM1(S4) COM2(S4) USB1(S3)
USB2(S3) PBTN(S4)
acpitimer0 at acpi0: 3579545 Hz, 24 bits
acpimadt0 at acpi0 addr 0xfee00000: PC-AT compat
cpu0 at mainbus0: apid 0 (boot processor)
cpu0: apic clock running at 132MHz
ioapic0 at mainbus0: apid 8 pa 0xfec00000, version 20, 24 pins
ioapic0: misconfigured as apic 0, remapped to apid 8
acpiprt0 at acpi0: bus 0 (PCI0)
acpiprt1 at acpi0: bus 2 (HUB_)
acpicpu0 at acpi0
acpibtn0 at acpi0: PBTN
bios0: ROM list: 0xc0000/0x8000 0xe0000/0x10000
pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1 (bios)
pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82815 Host" rev 0x02
vga1 at pci0 dev 2 function 0 "Intel 82815 Video" rev 0x02
wsdisplay0 at vga1 mux 1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation)
wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation)
intagp0 at vga1
agp0 at intagp0: aperture at 0x44000000, size 0x4000000
ppb0 at pci0 dev 30 function 0 "Intel 82801BA Hub-to-PCI" rev 0x01
pci1 at ppb0 bus 2
fxp0 at pci1 dev 8 function 0 "Intel 82562" rev 0x01, i82562: apic 8
int 20 (irq 5), address 00:02:a5:56:0d:f8
inphy0 at fxp0 phy 1: i82562EM 10/100 PHY, rev. 0
rl0 at pci1 dev 9 function 0 "Realtek 8139" rev 0x10: apic 8 int 18
(irq 10), address 00:e0:4c:15:2a:07
rlphy0 at rl0 phy 0: RTL internal PHY
ichpcib0 at pci0 dev 31 function 0 "Intel 82801BA LPC" rev 0x01
pciide0 at pci0 dev 31 function 1 "Intel 82801BA IDE" rev 0x01: DMA,
channel 0 wired to compatibility, channel 1 wired to compatibility
wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <CF 1GB>
wd0: 1-sector PIO, LBA, 967MB, 1981728 sectors
wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2
pciide0: channel 1 disabled (no drives)
uhci0 at pci0 dev 31 function 4 "Intel 82801BA USB" rev 0x01: apic 8
int 23 (irq 10)
auich0 at pci0 dev 31 function 5 "Intel 82801BA AC97" rev 0x01: apic 8
int 17 (irq 5), ICH2 AC97
ac97: codec id 0x41445360 (Analog Devices AD1885)
ac97: codec features headphone, Analog Devices Phat Stereo
audio0 at auich0
isa0 at ichpcib0
isadma0 at isa0
com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
com1 at isa0 port 0x2f8/8 irq 3: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
pmsi0 at pckbc0 (aux slot)
pckbc0: using irq 12 for aux slot
wsmouse0 at pmsi0 mux 0
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
midi0 at pcppi0: <PC speaker>
spkr0 at pcppi0
lpt0 at isa0 port 0x378/4 irq 7
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0/16: reported by CPUID; using exception 16
fdc0 at isa0 port 0x3f0/6 irq 6 drq 2
usb0 at uhci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0 at usb0 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support
vscsi0 at root
scsibus0 at vscsi0: 256 targets
softraid0 at root
wd0(pciide0:0:0): timeout
type: ata
c_bcount: 512
c_skip: 0
pciide0:0:0: bus-master DMA error: missing interrupt, status=0x21
wd0c: device timeout reading fsbn 0 (wd0 bn 0; cn 0 tn 0 sn 0), retrying
wd0(pciide0:0:0): timeout
type: ata
c_bcount: 512
c_skip: 0
pciide0:0:0: bus-master DMA error: missing interrupt, status=0x21
wd0: transfer error, downgrading to PIO mode 4
wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4
wd0c: device timeout reading fsbn 0 (wd0 bn 0; cn 0 tn 0 sn 0), retrying
wd0: soft error (corrected)
root on wd0a swap on wd0b dump on wd0b
