32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case • Hacker News Board

Re: 32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case

#11

Post by mdwrigh2 » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 3:15 PM UTC

Calxeda has been building 16 core cards[1] for awhile now with about 18 fitting in a 1U-sized box[2], each card connected by 10GbE similar to this[3].

[1]: http://www.calxeda.com/technology/products/energycards/quadn...

[2]: http://semiaccurate.com/2011/11/03/calxeda-launches-a-4-core...

[3]: http://www.calxeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/EnergyCard...

Re: 32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case

#12

Post by electic » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 3:19 PM UTC

Completely random, but I think it is funny the company is named "CodeThink Limited." That can't be good.

Re: 32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case

#13

Post by rjek » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 3:36 PM UTC

mdwrigh2 wrote: post #11

Calxeda has been building 16 core cards[1] for awhile now with about 18 fitting in a 1U-sized box[2], each card connected by 10GbE similar to this[3]. [1]: http://www.calxeda.com/technology/products/energycards/quadn... [2]: http://semiaccurate.com/2011/11/03/calxeda-launches-a-4-core... [3]: http://www.calxeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/EnergyCard...

And you can buy them where, exactly? :)

Re: 32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case

#14

Post by mdwrigh2 » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 3:40 PM UTC

rjek wrote: post #13

mdwrigh2 wrote: post #11

Calxeda has been building 16 core cards[1] for awhile now with about 18 fitting in a 1U-sized box[2], each card connected by 10GbE similar to this[3]. [1]: http://www.calxeda.com/technology/products/energycards/quadn... [2]: http://semiaccurate.com/2011/11/03/calxeda-launches-a-4-core... [3]: http://www.calxeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/EnergyCard...

And you can buy them where, exactly? :)

Boston Limited should be shipping Viridis units now [1][2].

[1]: http://www.boston.co.uk/solutions/viridis/default.aspx

[2]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/09/boston_viridis_arm_s...

Re: 32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case

#15

Post by rjek » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 3:43 PM UTC

mdwrigh2 wrote: post #14

rjek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you can buy them where, exactly? :)

Boston Limited should be shipping Viridis units now [1][2]. [1]: http://www.boston.co.uk/solutions/viridis/default.aspx [2]: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/09/boston_viridis_arm_s...

Yeah, I see they have the same sort of "talk to us for pricing and more info".

Important things to note is that each of the nodes in this Slab have their own local SATA solid-state storage, and the individual CPUs are quicker. The Boston thing has higher density though.

Re: 32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case

#16

Post by EwanToo » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 3:47 PM UTC

montecarl wrote: post #6

Looks neat. It should have a redundant power supply though. With redundant power just one of these could be a good platform for deploying fault-tolerant services.

I think the point of this kind of server is to build the fault tolerance at the rack, or at least 1U, level, not at the level of individual components.

If an individual server fails then your service shouldn't even blink.

Re: 32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case

#17

Post by rys » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 3:52 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #2

Not a 32 core computer. It's 8 4-core SoCs with independent storage connected by a 5 Gbps network switch. Not a useless machine (it's a cheap way to buy lots of DRAM bandwidth, I'll note), but not what the headline is selling as.

So each quad-core SoC appears to the outside world as its own system and only communicates via Ethernet? Not useless at all, but it's not clear how the SoCs are presented.

Re: 32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case

#18

Post by sciurus » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 3:57 PM UTC

lvh wrote: post #3

ajross wrote: post #2

Not a 32 core computer. It's 8 4-core SoCs with independent storage connected by a 5 Gbps network switch. Not a useless machine (it's a cheap way to buy lots of DRAM bandwidth, I'll note), but not what the headline is selling as.

Did the headline change? The one I see now just says that it's 32 cores in a tiny box, not that it's one machine specifically.

The site itself is a little misleading. It says "The Baserock Slab is a multi-processor server". To me, calling something a multi-processor server implies that a single OS instance has access to all the hardware. Instead, this is eight independent systems in a single chassis. Which is still awesome for that suggested use cases, such as an ARM build system.

Re: 32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case

#19

Post by wcchandler » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 3:58 PM UTC

mdwrigh2 wrote: post #11

Calxeda has been building 16 core cards[1] for awhile now with about 18 fitting in a 1U-sized box[2], each card connected by 10GbE similar to this[3]. [1]: http://www.calxeda.com/technology/products/energycards/quadn... [2]: http://semiaccurate.com/2011/11/03/calxeda-launches-a-4-core... [3]: http://www.calxeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/EnergyCard...

HP has also been working on Project Moonshot which (I believe) is based on Calxeda.

http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/iss/110111.aspx

Re: 32 cores of fast ARM in half-depth 1U case

#20

Post by colanderman » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 4:02 PM UTC

mdwrigh2 wrote: post #11

Calxeda has been building 16 core cards[1] for awhile now with about 18 fitting in a 1U-sized box[2], each card connected by 10GbE similar to this[3]. [1]: http://www.calxeda.com/technology/products/energycards/quadn... [2]: http://semiaccurate.com/2011/11/03/calxeda-launches-a-4-core... [3]: http://www.calxeda.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/EnergyCard...

Not to mention Tilera, who makes 36-core chips/cards [1], with 4 in a 1U box [2], with each processor with connected to each its four neighbors by a 250 Gb/s link.

[1] http://tilera.com/products/processors/TILE-Gx_Family [2] http://tilera.com/products/platforms [3] http://www.tilera.com/technology