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Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

dell.com

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Re: Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

#41

Post by notacoward »

ris wrote: post #34
notacoward wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the closest comparison seems to be Viridis. http://www.boston.co.uk/solutions/viridis/default.aspx Both have 12 cards per shelf, each card containing four quad-core ARM processors. The Dell Copper cards are a bit beefier, at 1.6GHz and 8GB and 1.4GHz vs. 4GB for the BL Viridis, OTOH, the Viridis processors are 64-bit and the shelf is 2U instead of 3U, which might more than make up for the other differences.…

I don't know where you're getting the 64-bit thing from, but beyond that, comparing clock speeds between a Marvell Armada XP and the EnergyCore in the Boston machine is essentially meaningless.

Yes, you're right, the EnergyCore isn't 64-bit, and of course there are other differences between the architectures. Perhaps you could actually provide some information on how those differences might affect the two systems' capabilities. Or are you just here to snipe at others?

Re: Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

#42

Post by wtracy »

wlievens wrote: post #24

Is there a JVM for these?

Apparently Oracle has an "early access" version of Java SE for ARM. I'm pretty sure that there are a few open source VMs floating around with ARM support, but I wouldn't count on any of them being full drop-in replacements for Oracle Java.

(Obviously there's a bunch of J2ME and other embedded implementations, but I assume that's not what you're looking for.)

Re: Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

#43

Post by leoc »

wtracy wrote: post #17

Are there any ARM servers currently available to Normal People? I got excited when I first saw the headline because the last time I looked I didn't see anything available in the hobbyist/small business price range.

It depends what you mean by a server: the Utilite http://utilite-computer.com/web/home with its dual gigabit Ethernet ports might be enough for some applications.

Re: Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

#44

Post by notacoward »

ck2 wrote: post #32

Are these really better per watt at serving content? I'm all for x86/intel competition but I don't see this as real savings yet?

Looks like they'd be a lot better per watt.

http://armservers.com/2012/06/18/apache-benchmarks-for-calxe...

This is hardly surprising to me. I worked on similar low-power high-density systems at SiCortex for a couple of years. High clock rates and big caches do improve performance, but they increase power consumption even more, so for a parallelizable workload a larger number of "wimpier" processors can do more work per watt.

Re: Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

#45

Post by voidlogic »

lazyjones wrote: post #38
voidlogic wrote: post #33

I think x86/amd64 virtualization has made ARM a much less compelling option for servers than what it would have been a few years ago. I'm looking forward to benchmarks of new ARM server CPU (esp. AMDs), but in the past comparing scale out ARM boxes and tradtional servers in the same space has: 1. Been much more more in favor x86/amd64 under low load (much lower latency for users) 2. Been pretty similar under very hig…

> In reality I could fill a rack with these arm blades or have two quad socket x86/amd64 servers be equivalent or better Quad socket x86 is still prohibitively expensive, but in the price per performance assessment you might be right (at least if you do not consider the expensive high-end x86 CPUs). The ARM blades look interesting for bare metal clouds though.

>Quad socket x86 is still prohibitively expensive

Less expensive then a rack of these new ARM blades.

Still, lets take quad socket off the table, 4 2U dual socket x86/amd64 boxes still is a better value proposition.

Re: Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

#46

Post by wlievens »

wtracy wrote: post #42
wlievens wrote: post #24

Is there a JVM for these?

Apparently Oracle has an "early access" version of Java SE for ARM. I'm pretty sure that there are a few open source VMs floating around with ARM support, but I wouldn't count on any of them being full drop-in replacements for Oracle Java. (Obviously there's a bunch of J2ME and other embedded implementations, but I assume that's not what you're looking for.)

Nope. We're going to build a small compute cluster for java 7 code. It's for a few dozen cores so nothing huge. I love these embarrassingly parallelizable problems so the idea of using cheap servers has some appeal to me. Though the individual job run time matters too so we need something somewhere in the middle.

Re: Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

#47

Post by lazyjones »

voidlogic wrote: post #45
lazyjones wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In reality I could fill a rack with these arm blades or have two quad socket x86/amd64 servers be equivalent or better Quad socket x86 is still prohibitively expensive, but in the price per performance assessment you might be right (at least if you do not consider the expensive high-end x86 CPUs). The ARM blades look interesting for bare metal clouds though.

>Quad socket x86 is still prohibitively expensive Less expensive then a rack of these new ARM blades. Still, lets take quad socket off the table, 4 2U dual socket x86/amd64 boxes still is a better value proposition.

> 4 2U dual socket x86/amd64 boxes still is a better value proposition.

Not if you're aiming at a good density (processing power per rack). But there are many blade options (8 boards in 3U, or 4 in 2U from Supermicro e.g.) for x86 that will fit the bill, yes.

The cost for the vendor should be much lower with ARM CPUs though (the CPUs will probably be dirt cheap, while Intel's aren't).

Re: Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

#49

Post by lazyjones »

wtracy wrote: post #39
lazyjones wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In reality I could fill a rack with these arm blades or have two quad socket x86/amd64 servers be equivalent or better Quad socket x86 is still prohibitively expensive, but in the price per performance assessment you might be right (at least if you do not consider the expensive high-end x86 CPUs). The ARM blades look interesting for bare metal clouds though.

> Quad socket x86 is still prohibitively expensive Is there an engineering reason for this, or is there just not enough volume for those boards to be economical?

I'd vouch for the 3rd possibility: the prices are artificially high because the customers who buy these configurations can afford to pay the premium.

Re: Copper enables the ARM server ecosystem

#50

Post by timthorn »

wtracy wrote: post #40
ptx wrote: post #30

> What is ARM? > An advanced RISC machine (ARM) server employs small, > low-power ARM processors, typically deployed as > systems on a chip (SoC) to reduce space, power consumption > and cost. This looks like a perfect example of the kind of violation a trademark owner is required to pursue to protect the trademark: Dell uses "ARM server" here to mean "a server that is RISC-based and advanced" rather than "a server […

ARM stands for "Advanced RISC Machine". I believe the copy is correct, although I would have expected "advanced RISC machine" to be capitalized as "Advanced RISC Machine" as it refers to a proper name.

Indeed - although ARM officially no longer stands for anything according to the company.
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