4 ms·

There are no information about the chipset, memory specs and extension slots in particular. It could be a huge bottleneck between CPUs and RAM, because of conc

by c00p3r 16y ago

There are no information about the chipset, memory specs and extension slots in particular. It could be a huge bottleneck between CPUs and RAM, because of concurrent access of so many CPUs to the memory while Atoms have a very small caches. It means that real-world applications, like a multi-threaded services (especially JVM-based, or simply MySQL) could not be used efficiently. I'm also very skeptical about hundreds of KVMs which is a the only working virtualization technology I know. =)

hga 16y ago
Here's a lot more technical detail: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3768/seamicro-announces-sm10000-server-with-512-atom-cpus-and-low-power-consumption/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3768/seamicro-announces-sm1000... Per CPU (8 per board): Atom Z530 (1.6GHz, Silverthorne) US15 chipset (Poulsbo) 2GB DDR2 Per board: 4 ASICs to virtualize IO 2x PCIe x16 connectors "Each hop takes 8 microseconds", so good enough for (most/all?) IO but not good enough for memory. No ECC of course, it being a non-server Intel chip. Each single cored CPU has its own DIMM. * * * * EDITED to clarify the layout per CPU and per board after c00p3r made it clear I wasn't being clear. * * * *
- c00p3r 16y ago
  So, it's just a tight packing of a 512 netbook's boards in a one box. I thought it is a 512-core system. Oh, I'm such a moron. Nothing to see here.
  - hga 16y ago
    No, no: each board has 8 CPU/chipet/DIMM(s?) (latter on the other side of the board) with 4 ASICs each handing all the rest of a motherboard's IO, virtualizing it (e.g. each core sees 4 virtual SATA drives). That's why each board needs 2 x16 PCIe connections, the backplane has a fancy supercomputer style torus topology interconnect, and you can put up to 64 physical disks in front. Lots of Ethernet out the back and there's an FPGA system for the backplane, which might be due to the small number of units but will give them lots of flexibility.
wmf 16y ago
It's a cluster, so each Atom has its own RAM.
- c00p3r 16y ago
  Yeah, I missed the point. =)

by c00p3r 16y ago

hga 16y ago

Here's a lot more technical detail: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3768/seamicro-announces-sm10000-server-with-512-atom-cpus-and-low-power-consumption/2 http://www.anandtech.com/show/3768/seamicro-announces-sm1000... Per CPU (8 per board): Atom Z530 (1.6GHz, Silverthorne) US15 chipset (Poulsbo) 2GB DDR2 Per board: 4 ASICs to virtualize IO 2x PCIe x16 connectors "Each hop takes 8 microseconds", so good enough for (most/all?) IO but not good enough for memory. No ECC of course, it being a non-server Intel chip. Each single cored CPU has its own DIMM. * * * * EDITED to clarify the layout per CPU and per board after c00p3r made it clear I wasn't being clear. * * * *

c00p3r 16y ago
So, it's just a tight packing of a 512 netbook's boards in a one box. I thought it is a 512-core system. Oh, I'm such a moron. Nothing to see here.
- hga 16y ago
  No, no: each board has 8 CPU/chipet/DIMM(s?) (latter on the other side of the board) with 4 ASICs each handing all the rest of a motherboard's IO, virtualizing it (e.g. each core sees 4 virtual SATA drives). That's why each board needs 2 x16 PCIe connections, the backplane has a fancy supercomputer style torus topology interconnect, and you can put up to 64 physical disks in front. Lots of Ethernet out the back and there's an FPGA system for the backplane, which might be due to the small number of units but will give them lots of flexibility.

wmf 16y ago

It's a cluster, so each Atom has its own RAM.

c00p3r 16y ago
Yeah, I missed the point. =)