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On 3/30/2011 08:27, Brian Long wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:AANLkTikGZhUEtt9dwHY81oEwgpqhSjtoZBe4FRTiUGig@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 3:07 PM, Raymond
Wagner <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:raymond@wagnerrp.com">raymond@wagnerrp.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt
0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);
padding-left: 1ex;">
<br>
The Atom processor is the perfect example of the wrong product
at the<br>
right time. Netbooks had just started coming out, and while
some ran<br>
Linux, most people wanted to stick with Windows, which
requires an x86<br>
processor. The ULV mobile processors are considerably higher<br>
performance than the Atoms while in the same power envelope,
but due to<br>
all the crap Intel ripped out of the design, the Atoms were
low<br>
transistor count and dirt cheap to manufacture. ARMs at the
time had<br>
similar performance, with a small fraction of the power
consumption, but<br>
since they couldn't run Windows, the Atom won out. Windows 8
is<br>
expected out sometime next year with ARM support. I don't
expect the<br>
Atom line to survive much beyond that.<br>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
It appears some companies are betting the farm on Atom
surviving a little longer:<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.seamicro.com/?q=node/38">http://www.seamicro.com/?q=node/38</a><br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
Seamicro is only riding the existing PR with that one. As
mentioned, the ARMs have about as much integer performance as the
Atom, at a fraction of the power consumption and cost. While the
ARMs have poor floating point performance, the Atoms aren't
especially good at that either.<br>
<br>
So let's look at this thing. 512 1.66GHz cores in a 10U chassis,
replacing 40U of traditional server. Now a traditional server
processor is going to do around 3-4 times the work per core as these
Atoms, and since you can stuff 32 cores into a 2U server, you're
looking at the same 8-12U of equipment as this thing, not the 40U
they claim.<br>
<br>
Now what about price? That 2U chassis with 8 quad core 2.93GHz
Xeons, 192GB of memory, and 12 500GB drives is going to run just
under $10K. For somewhere between $40K-$60K, you can build an
equivalent traditional server system to that Seamicro box. The
Seamicro box costs $150K.<br>
<br>
Now what about power consumption? That 2U chassis is going to eat
up around 1kW under full load, or maybe half that while idle. While
each of those 256 Atoms is only going to consume around 8W each,
figure double that when the memory and chipset is taken into
account. That puts it at maybe 4kW for the whole system under full
load. Now here's the problem, those desktop Atom chips don't really
idle. One of the things Intel ripped out in the name of cheapness
was the clock stepping and power gating. That Atom will consume
less power under load, but more power while idle, than the
traditional server. Surely for one third the price, that 20% less
power consumption under load is not something you would be all that
concerned about.<br>
<br>
What other concerns are there with going with that Atom solution?
First, you have software licensing. Commercial server software
often charges per processor or per core. Often times the software
costs considerably more than the server, meaning it's advantageous
to get the power powerful per thread system you can. The Atoms lose
out big time here. Next, you have inter-connectivity. The Atom
will have 64 gigabit ethernet ports, compared to the traditional
server's 40. With typical web serving applications, that's plenty.
For most HPC applications, that's inadequate, and you're going to
want something fast with low latency. To get infiniband, you're
looking at an extra $15K for 20 ports on the traditional server,
plus another $10K for a switch to handle them. For the Atoms, it's
simply not an option and you're out of luck.<br>
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