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    The State of ARM RISC in the DataCenter

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Water Closet
    armrisc
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    • MattSpellerM
      MattSpeller @thwr
      last edited by MattSpeller

      @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

      @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

      @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

      Banana Pro + Samsung EVO SSD + USB SD card reader + a few rubber bands = pretty cool armhf image prepping machine 🙂

      For anyone else who's wondering wtf fruit is doing in an electronics project

      http://www.lemaker.org/product-bananapro-specification.html

      Raspberry's, Banana's... will order some Orange's soon, too 😉

      And a HiKey for sure. I expect them to deliver a huge performance boost in every possible way.

      Another interesting product is the 96boards EE HuskyBoard: 4x SATA, PCI-E and DDR3 SO-DIMM

      SOC: AMD Opteron A1100 Series

      damn that's no joke

      AMD Opteron A1100 Series SoC specifications:
      Up to eight ARM Cortex-A57 cores with 4MB shared Level 2 and 8MB of shared Level 3 cache
      2x 64-bit DDR3/DDR4 channels supporting up to 1866 MHz with ECC
      2x 10Gb Ethernet network connectivity
      8-lane PCI-Express® Gen 3
      14 SATA-3 ports

      thwrT 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
      • thwrT
        thwr @MattSpeller
        last edited by

        @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

        @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

        @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

        @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

        Banana Pro + Samsung EVO SSD + USB SD card reader + a few rubber bands = pretty cool armhf image prepping machine 🙂

        For anyone else who's wondering wtf fruit is doing in an electronics project

        http://www.lemaker.org/product-bananapro-specification.html

        Raspberry's, Banana's... will order some Orange's soon, too 😉

        And a HiKey for sure. I expect them to deliver a huge performance boost in every possible way.

        Another interesting product is the 96boards EE HuskyBoard: 4x SATA, PCI-E and DDR3 SO-DIMM

        SOC: AMD Opteron A1100 Series

        damn that's no joke

        AMD Opteron A1100 Series SoC specifications:
        Up to eight ARM Cortex-A57 cores with 4MB shared Level 2 and 8MB of shared Level 3 cache
        2x 64-bit DDR3/DDR4 channels supporting up to 1866 MHz with ECC
        2x 10Gb Ethernet network connectivity
        8-lane PCI-Express® Gen 3
        14 SATA-3 ports

        Jupp. Little monster.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • thwrT
          thwr
          last edited by

          The LeMaker Cello is a similar A1100 based board, available for 299 USD. Would be a perfect test / dev rig.

          MattSpellerM 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • MattSpellerM
            MattSpeller @thwr
            last edited by

            @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

            The LeMaker Cello is a similar A1100 based board, available for 299 USD. Would be a perfect test / dev rig.

            How close is that to being able to buy a micro-atx board chip and ram though...

            thwrT 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • MattSpellerM
              MattSpeller @thwr
              last edited by

              @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

              The LeMaker Cello is a similar A1100 based board, available for 299 USD. Would be a perfect test / dev rig.

              http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/kWZyxY

              Celeron, 4gb ram, 60gb ssd, case, psu... $311CDN

              thwrT 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • thwrT
                thwr @MattSpeller
                last edited by

                @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                The LeMaker Cello is a similar A1100 based board, available for 299 USD. Would be a perfect test / dev rig.

                How close is that to being able to buy a micro-atx board chip and ram though...

                Very close: http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/amd-opteron-a1100-enterprise-production,1-3107.html

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • thwrT
                  thwr @MattSpeller
                  last edited by

                  @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                  @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                  The LeMaker Cello is a similar A1100 based board, available for 299 USD. Would be a perfect test / dev rig.

                  http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/kWZyxY

                  Celeron, 4gb ram, 60gb ssd, case, psu... $311CDN

                  Yeah, but that's an Intel system. The whole point about the ARM architecture in servers is Flops per Watt. They aren't as fast as Intel systems, but they are much more efficient.

                  MattSpellerM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • MattSpellerM
                    MattSpeller @thwr
                    last edited by

                    @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                    @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                    @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                    The LeMaker Cello is a similar A1100 based board, available for 299 USD. Would be a perfect test / dev rig.

                    http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/kWZyxY

                    Celeron, 4gb ram, 60gb ssd, case, psu... $311CDN

                    Yeah, but that's an Intel system. The whole point about the ARM architecture in servers is Flops per Watt. They aren't as fast as Intel systems, but they are much more efficient.

                    Lets hope the pricing trend heads lower once significant production ramps up

                    thwrT 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • thwrT
                      thwr @MattSpeller
                      last edited by

                      @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                      @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                      @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                      @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                      The LeMaker Cello is a similar A1100 based board, available for 299 USD. Would be a perfect test / dev rig.

                      http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/kWZyxY

                      Celeron, 4gb ram, 60gb ssd, case, psu... $311CDN

                      Yeah, but that's an Intel system. The whole point about the ARM architecture in servers is Flops per Watt. They aren't as fast as Intel systems, but they are much more efficient.

                      Lets hope the pricing trend heads lower once significant production ramps up

                      Well, just from looking at the price of the dev board, which is considerable low, I would say we will see some interesting ARM based server boards in the future.

                      Also Linux and BSD both don't care much about the underlying architecture, which means that a proven OS is already available.

                      DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • DashrenderD
                        Dashrender @thwr
                        last edited by

                        @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                        @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                        @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                        @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                        @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                        The LeMaker Cello is a similar A1100 based board, available for 299 USD. Would be a perfect test / dev rig.

                        http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/kWZyxY

                        Celeron, 4gb ram, 60gb ssd, case, psu... $311CDN

                        Yeah, but that's an Intel system. The whole point about the ARM architecture in servers is Flops per Watt. They aren't as fast as Intel systems, but they are much more efficient.

                        Lets hope the pricing trend heads lower once significant production ramps up

                        Well, just from looking at the price of the dev board, which is considerable low, I would say we will see some interesting ARM based server boards in the future.

                        Also Linux and BSD both don't care much about the underlying architecture, which means that a proven OS is already available.

                        Sure, I get that. But when Dell/HP puts their spin on it, it will probably be nearly the same cost as typical servers. I'm guessing we'll only see a few hundred dollars cost difference on average.

                        Like others things, in this case the CPU probably isn't where most of the costs come from.

                        thwrT 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • thwrT
                          thwr @Dashrender
                          last edited by thwr

                          @Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                          @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                          @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                          @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                          @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                          @thwr said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                          The LeMaker Cello is a similar A1100 based board, available for 299 USD. Would be a perfect test / dev rig.

                          http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/kWZyxY

                          Celeron, 4gb ram, 60gb ssd, case, psu... $311CDN

                          Yeah, but that's an Intel system. The whole point about the ARM architecture in servers is Flops per Watt. They aren't as fast as Intel systems, but they are much more efficient.

                          Lets hope the pricing trend heads lower once significant production ramps up

                          Well, just from looking at the price of the dev board, which is considerable low, I would say we will see some interesting ARM based server boards in the future.

                          Also Linux and BSD both don't care much about the underlying architecture, which means that a proven OS is already available.

                          Sure, I get that. But when Dell/HP puts their spin on it, it will probably be nearly the same cost as typical servers. I'm guessing we'll only see a few hundred dollars cost difference on average.

                          Like others things, in this case the CPU probably isn't where most of the costs come from.

                          Think of larger scales. While a single A11xx probably can't beat a modern Xeon in anything but CPU power/watt, a whole bunch of them can. They could be pretty perfect webservers, in-memory database nodes, maybe even virtualization hosts for ARM based VMs at some point in time.

                          MattSpellerM 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • DashrenderD
                            Dashrender
                            last edited by

                            Sure, I see when we don't have typical 2-4 socket computers, instead a server might have 20+ sockets.

                            scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                            • MattSpellerM
                              MattSpeller @thwr
                              last edited by

                              @thwr @Dashrender It will be interesting to see how it works out between consolidation (ARM server racks) and IoT/shards/stand-alone/single-board-computers

                              scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                              • scottalanmillerS
                                scottalanmiller @Dashrender
                                last edited by

                                @Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                Sure, I see when we don't have typical 2-4 socket computers, instead a server might have 20+ sockets.

                                Actually the move will be to single sockets, at least at first. ARMs rarely support multiple sockets.

                                DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • scottalanmillerS
                                  scottalanmiller @MattSpeller
                                  last edited by

                                  @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                  @thwr @Dashrender It will be interesting to see how it works out between consolidation (ARM server racks) and IoT/shards/stand-alone/single-board-computers

                                  SBCs are the expectation for racks of ARM servers, like MoonShot.

                                  DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • DashrenderD
                                    Dashrender @scottalanmiller
                                    last edited by

                                    @scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                    @Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                    Sure, I see when we don't have typical 2-4 socket computers, instead a server might have 20+ sockets.

                                    Actually the move will be to single sockets, at least at first. ARMs rarely support multiple sockets.

                                    So how do you see these appearing in the DC? Single socket, I'm guessing you're not virtualizing.

                                    scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • DashrenderD
                                      Dashrender @scottalanmiller
                                      last edited by

                                      @scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                      @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                      @thwr @Dashrender It will be interesting to see how it works out between consolidation (ARM server racks) and IoT/shards/stand-alone/single-board-computers

                                      SBCs are the expectation for racks of ARM servers, like MoonShot.

                                      This makes great sense when looking at DevOps, but I don't understand how they would work in a typical virtualized setup - but maybe that's not who they are going up against?

                                      scottalanmillerS thwrT 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • scottalanmillerS
                                        scottalanmiller @Dashrender
                                        last edited by

                                        @Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                        @scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                        @Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                        Sure, I see when we don't have typical 2-4 socket computers, instead a server might have 20+ sockets.

                                        Actually the move will be to single sockets, at least at first. ARMs rarely support multiple sockets.

                                        So how do you see these appearing in the DC? Single socket, I'm guessing you're not virtualizing.

                                        Why? It can go both ways, but Xen and containers are the standards that are expected. Why would single socket not have you virtualizing?

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • scottalanmillerS
                                          scottalanmiller @Dashrender
                                          last edited by

                                          @Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                          @scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                          @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                          @thwr @Dashrender It will be interesting to see how it works out between consolidation (ARM server racks) and IoT/shards/stand-alone/single-board-computers

                                          SBCs are the expectation for racks of ARM servers, like MoonShot.

                                          This makes great sense when looking at DevOps, but I don't understand how they would work in a typical virtualized setup - but maybe that's not who they are going up against?

                                          DevOps and typical virtualization overlap. These are smaller individual units that you are used to, but why do you feel that this would significantly impact virtualization or deployment decisions outside of needing more nodes that are cheaper rather than fewer that are more expensive?

                                          DashrenderD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • thwrT
                                            thwr @Dashrender
                                            last edited by

                                            @Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                            @scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                            @MattSpeller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

                                            @thwr @Dashrender It will be interesting to see how it works out between consolidation (ARM server racks) and IoT/shards/stand-alone/single-board-computers

                                            SBCs are the expectation for racks of ARM servers, like MoonShot.

                                            This makes great sense when looking at DevOps, but I don't understand how they would work in a typical virtualized setup - but maybe that's not who they are going up against?

                                            Don't forget that ARM SoCs can easily pack dozens of cores in a single package. For example: https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/09/01/details-emerge-chinas-64-core-arm-chip/

                                            I would expect to see servers like the aforementioned MoonShot from HP: Lots of cores per SoC, but just one SoC per board. And dozens of boards per chassis.

                                            scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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