Raspberry Pi server clusters

And yet more news about using the Calxeda chip, this time from Dell and involving the Apache Software Foundation.  That really make it interesting!

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/10/25/1811225/dell-strays-further-from-intel-chips-donates-arm-server-to-asf

Some ranges of Dell servers are very reasonably priced.  There is hope yet that their ARM servers aren't going to be completely beyond the enthusiast's budget.

Did you see this?

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone?ref=category

Neil Moloney wrote:

 

Did you see this?

 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone?ref=category

I say that a month ago.  It seems like a great project and I hope this helps with increasing computer performance.

AMD is planning to make 64-bit ARMs for servers.

From ZDNet:

 

AMD has announced that it is teaming up with ARM to develop 64-bit ARM processors for servers to meet growing challenges for data centers. "AMD will transform the computing data center environment today," said AMD CEO and president Rory Read during a press conference on Monday afternoon, asserting that AMD will be the first company to offer both 64-bit ARM and x86 server processors.

More interesting news in this area:

• samsung-may-start-making-arm-server-chips  [slashdot]
• samsung_laying_groundwork_server_chips_analysts_say  [computerworld]

One thing that surprises me is that Intel aren't building up a server market presense based on multiple clustered Atom chips.  Indeed, Atom seems to be almost a stealth product for them, very low key, and that's pretty odd when the future clearly forecasts competition in power/watt from ARM.

Morgaine.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

One thing that surprises me is that Intel aren't building up a server market presense based on multiple clustered Atom chips.  Indeed, Atom seems to be almost a stealth product for them, very low key, and that's pretty odd when the future clearly forecasts competition in [performance]/watt from ARM.

From my recollection of microprocessor history, Intel has never been into low power.  Intel's technological model is squeezing lots and lots of fast transistors onto a piece of element 14 and they are IMO better at doing this than anyone else.  This has allowed them to be lazy about architecture, since transistor performance has so far been able to win.  But all those fast transistors waste a lot of power and require mechanical cooling, which is one of the big reasons PowerPC has had much more success in industrial and automotive applications.  (ARM partners like TI and Freescale are now going after these applications.)

Another thing is profit margin.  Intel chips have always been really expensive.  Again from my recollection of uP history, I think the original quantity 1 price of the Intel 8080 was US$300 (not adjusted for inflation).  Yes, you could get an 8008 and its support chips for less, but the 8080 had much better performance and instruction set -- and it got a lot cheaper really fast.  However, whenever a new Intel uP comes out, it's generally in the same price range.  Compare to RasPi's US$5 SoC.

When a large company with large profit margins is faced with technology that can dramatically improve price/performance, they often retrench and sabotage internal efforts to take advantage of new technology.  Basically, they don't want internal products with improved price/performance to compete with the old ways of doing things which have enjoyed high profit margins.  Too often the large company stalls internal efforts so long that the company isn't ever able to recover.

My favorite example of this phenomenon is the IBM PCjr, which came out in 1984 -- the same year as the original Macintosh.  The PCjr could have taken advantage of newer Intel SoCs such as the 80186 and produced much better performance than the 1981 IBM PC, at much lower cost.  However, IBM didn't want the lower profit margin PCjr to take business away from the older PC, so they made sure the PCjr didn't compete by sabotaging its performance and giving it a toy keyboard.  Well, PCjr didn't compete with the PC -- or with anything else.

JMO/YMMV

Hmmm, dunno.  Deliberate internal sabotage of developments that could lead to better technology at lower profit margins is one possible explanation, but it's singularly short-sighted when there is a possible external competitor coming over the horizon.  Assuming that Intel does do forward planning, the likelihood seems low to me.

It also doesn't seem very likely  for a second reason:  Atom exists, and works very well.  I don't know what the current state of play is, but a couple of years ago it was winning head-to-head reviews against all comers on performance per watt.  Nobody (sane) sabotages a winning product, surely?

That said, the performance of ARM has improved massively in the last few years, so perhaps the situation has changed, not in Intel's favour.

The CEO of ARM, Warren East, says in an interview at http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507116/moores-law-is-becoming-irrelevant/ :

"To me a PC is really just a smartphone in another form factor. [cut]  TVs are the same.

TVs are big smartphones. Computers are kind of medium smartphones."

I quote it mainly because it made me chuckle, and although it's to be expected that the ARM CEO would say such things, there's quite a lot of truth in it as well.  Computers are intrinsically the same, whatever the niche.  And as he says later in the interview, ARM certainly wasn't designed expressly for smartphones.

I just wish ARM would do something a little more explicit in the direction that their heads regularly speak about.  Without cluster interconnect becoming available as an optional but integral part of the ARM architecture so that we don't have a Tower of Babel of incompatible interconnects, ARM-based servers will have a hard time becoming ubiquitous.

Morgaine.

On our earlier topic of ARM versus Atom, this comparison of a new Cortex-A15 versus an Atom from 2011 is rather eye-opening --- http://www.anandtech.com/show/6422/samsung-chromebook-xe303-review-testing-arms-cortex-a15/ .

Executive summary:  ARM wins on idle, but consumption is in the same ballpark for both when running flat out.  The performance figures favour ARM in this comparison, although one should bear in mind that the Atom in question was an old one.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

The CEO of ARM, Warren East, says in an interview at http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507116/moores-law-is-becoming-irrelevant/ :

 

"To me a PC is really just a smartphone in another form factor. [cut]  TVs are the same.

TVs are big smartphones. Computers are kind of medium smartphones."

 

I quote it mainly because it made me chuckle, and although it's to be expected that the ARM CEO would say such things, there's quite a lot of truth in it as well.  Computers are intrinsically the same, whatever the niche.  And as he says later in the interview, ARM certainly wasn't designed expressly for smartphones.

 

I just wish ARM would do something a little more explicit in the direction that their heads regularly speak about.  Without cluster interconnect becoming available as an optional but integral part of the ARM architecture so that we don't have a Tower of Babel of incompatible interconnects, ARM-based servers will have a hard time becoming ubiquitous.

 

Morgaine.

I hope that our Warren has his tongue embedded firmly in his cheek, or perhaps he's only concerned with his particular corner of the hardware world. Computet = smartphone = telly? Hmmm... perhaps in consumerland where it's only real tasks are to give access to media, "rich web content" (whatever that is), adverts, spam, oline shopping, more spam and then to become obsolete just in time for next gen. tech then maybe so. But, for folks like me who only really tolerate computers because they are good at doing hard sums very quickly then I fear he's talking cobblers.

If ARM is to become ubiquitous then it will have to offer a bit more than low power (in terms of Watts and flops) at bargain bucket prices. It's a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, where potential adopters don't bite unless they are confident about format longevity and future legacy support (a non-consideration with consumer devices, but essential in industry). Industrial software types may similarly balk at turning out high value, low volume product for a platform that's "not quite done yet" - especially as not all ARM hardware is created equal... The chip makers themselves probably aren't going to toss in features that are currently seen as niche in the hopes of attracting a few customers when consumer grade whatnot and low cost high volume embedded applications are ticking along quite nicely. Oh, I forgot the need for a fit-and-forget operating system that software and hardware manufacturers will have enough confidence in to universally support.

The trick will be to nudge things over that R0>1 tipping point, but there are a bazillion little details (and one big roadmap) to finalise first.