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I highly doubt it. Having multiple hardware architectures in a datacenter is very costly. One gets better prices buying more items from the same supplier. It's

by borisk 16y ago

I highly doubt it. Having multiple hardware architectures in a datacenter is very costly. One gets better prices buying more items from the same supplier. It's a lot easier to maintain replacement parts/units for 1 architecture. Developing, testing, fire fixing bugs on multiple architectures is slower.

tlack 16y ago
but when you have thousands of machines of each type, perhaps those economies of scale level out a bit
mrtron 16y ago
Google would argue with you. They roll a heterogenous server setup intentionally to minimize impact from hardware faults, bugs, etc. You build your software at a high level where the hardware under is abstracted away.
- gaius 16y ago
  Google's experience is only directly transferrable if you too are a search engine.
  - mkr-hn 16y ago
    They do a lot more than search, and as far as I know App Engine runs on the same distributed system.
    - gaius 16y ago
      OK, but is your workload like App Engine either? I can tell you right now that mine isn't; we'd grind to a halt if we tried to pass and share as much state as we do on it.
jsz0 16y ago
Depends how good of a deal they can offer you. Saving 20% on a fleet of x86 servers is great but over the long term the supplier isn't going to be paying your electricity bills.
- borisk 16y ago
  Right, but say FB can move 100% to ARM. Unless there are big differences in power consumption per x64/ARM unit in Web, Cashe and DB servers.