8 ms·

What are the use-cases for such a server? It does not look good for desktop use.

by aritmo 8y ago

Alupis 8y ago
Low power/high density virtualization hosting, website hosting, or even a native build server for linux arm distributions. That's a lot of ARM64 power in one platform.
- imtringued 8y ago
  I'm not so sure. This is a company that sells sub $100 computers after all. It depends on the type of ARM core and the manufacturing process. If it has 24 A53 cores then it wouldn't beat a 4 core desktop CPU from 2012. If it has 24 A72 cores but a manufacturing process older than 28nm then it still wouldn't be competitive with anything on 14nm or better.
  - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
    The parent mentioned it would be a good server for build operations that require an ARM cpu. Perhaps you meant cross compiling on an old CPU would still be faster, but there may be demand for native ARM build machines.
  - Alupis 8y ago
    A53 cores can use as little as tens of milliwatts... these aren't going to compete with Xeon or whatever high performance CPU's are being run in today's clouds... but for a static website at Wix (or whatever), you don't really need that performance majority of the time for majority of their customers. Same goes with most long-running VPS'... bursts of activity here and there or once a day or whatever. Being able to run those workloads on cheaper cores that consume far less power would be a huge win. Not all workloads would be a good fit, but those which are, this can be big.
  - opencl 8y ago
    They're A53 cores at 1Ghz assuming the article is right about it using the SC2A11. Multithread performance will probably be in the ballpark of a high end Android phone or a dual core laptop.
TaylorAlexander 8y ago
It would make a nice home file server.
- ausjke 8y ago
  ATOM series cpu will be good enough for home file server as it has lower power consumption too plus excellent kernel support.
  - Alupis 8y ago
    Might be good enough... but for a fair comparison, ARM has excellent kernel support, and can sip a few milliwatts per core instead of Atom's best of 2 watts per core. Might not make a difference if you attach them to spinning disks or something, but you can really turn the thing into a wall-plug sort of thing and never worry about it again.
    - ausjke 8y ago
      if it's an idle fileserver ATOM can be put into sleeping mode most of the time, so the power saving might not be as much comparing to ARM. if it's active 24x7, then hard-drive overshadows both ATOM and ARM CPU in terms of drawing currents. ATOM supports multiple native SATA ports and it is still hard for ARM to catch up. Marvell is the only ARM vendor does nice ARM+SATA but its chip is hard to find, plus it is used in low-end NAS devices while ATOM is in the mid-range, it's more for the cost-saving instead of power-saving though. I was attracted by ARM lowest-power in the last, until I realized hard-drive is the one consumes most power and ARM does not do well with non-multimedia IO.
      - nixgeek 8y ago
        I’m not sure these statements are true, can you please link me to some data? WD Red 10TB maxes out around 5.7W [1] under heavy read-write activity and can use much less when idling. Intel Atom is typically in the 20W range for the parts commonly picked for NAS solutions, but can go as low as 8W too [2] and again when idling would use less. I don’t think they have anything <5W which would directly support your statement the HDD uses more power than the CPU. [1] https://www.wd.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-800002.pdf https://www.wd.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_asse... [2] https://www.anandtech.com/show/11144/intel-launches-16core-atom-c3000-cpus-for-nas-servers-vehicles https://www.anandtech.com/show/11144/intel-launches-16core-a...
ianai 8y ago
More cores means more flops. It’s going to take increased core “concentration” to get to exascale.
Twirrim 8y ago
ARM has some interesting power and heat advantages over Intel/AMD at the moment. Power and Cooling make up significant costs for cloud providers (and for many companies, for that matter), especially on the cloud storage side. For a fair number of the services, particularly ones with very bursting workloads, that superior idle CPU usage, and reduced heat output is _very_ interesting. It opens up a number of possibilities where "good enough" performance is actually good enough, and the extra rack density provides some strong advantages, _particularly_ in easily parallelisable workloads (or completely independent workloads happening in parallel, for example functions as a service) Amazon isn't just providing ARM CPU servers because of customer demand, and nor is it just to get leverage with Intel. That's not the way they tend to work. They're providing them so that they can leverage them in-house as well. Amazon just likes to take the position that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If it's good for them, there's bound to be customers that will find it good for them also, and as you sell it to customers, you get to those advantages of scale much quicker.
- ianai 8y ago
  Cooling and power dictate just how much computation you can squeeze out of a data center. There’s even a fancy CS theorem about it. ARM really makes x86 look antiquated in this regard. I don’t think arm chips are where they need to be, yet, but the history of technology is full of this sort of thing. Medium term, I expect Intel to look much more innovative than current. Long term, we’re either all dead because the robots won or uploaded to the cloud hive mind once our contributions to the universe outweigh our costs.
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  Arm has no intrinsic advantage over x86 ISA wise, for the most part. High performance arm cores consume similar energy to x86.
  - floatboth 8y ago
    Not having to decode variable-length instructions is one advantage.

What are the use-cases for such a server? It does not look good for desktop use.

by aritmo 8y ago

What are the use-cases for such a server? It does not look good for desktop use.

Low power/high density virtualization hosting, website hosting, or even a native build server for linux arm distributions. That's a lot of ARM64 power in one platform.

imtringued 8y ago
I'm not so sure. This is a company that sells sub $100 computers after all. It depends on the type of ARM core and the manufacturing process. If it has 24 A53 cores then it wouldn't beat a 4 core desktop CPU from 2012. If it has 24 A72 cores but a manufacturing process older than 28nm then it still wouldn't be competitive with anything on 14nm or better.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  The parent mentioned it would be a good server for build operations that require an ARM cpu. Perhaps you meant cross compiling on an old CPU would still be faster, but there may be demand for native ARM build machines.
- Alupis 8y ago
  A53 cores can use as little as tens of milliwatts... these aren't going to compete with Xeon or whatever high performance CPU's are being run in today's clouds... but for a static website at Wix (or whatever), you don't really need that performance majority of the time for majority of their customers. Same goes with most long-running VPS'... bursts of activity here and there or once a day or whatever. Being able to run those workloads on cheaper cores that consume far less power would be a huge win. Not all workloads would be a good fit, but those which are, this can be big.
- opencl 8y ago
  They're A53 cores at 1Ghz assuming the article is right about it using the SC2A11. Multithread performance will probably be in the ballpark of a high end Android phone or a dual core laptop.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago

It would make a nice home file server.

ausjke 8y ago
ATOM series cpu will be good enough for home file server as it has lower power consumption too plus excellent kernel support.
- Alupis 8y ago
  Might be good enough... but for a fair comparison, ARM has excellent kernel support, and can sip a few milliwatts per core instead of Atom's best of 2 watts per core. Might not make a difference if you attach them to spinning disks or something, but you can really turn the thing into a wall-plug sort of thing and never worry about it again.
  - ausjke 8y ago
    if it's an idle fileserver ATOM can be put into sleeping mode most of the time, so the power saving might not be as much comparing to ARM. if it's active 24x7, then hard-drive overshadows both ATOM and ARM CPU in terms of drawing currents. ATOM supports multiple native SATA ports and it is still hard for ARM to catch up. Marvell is the only ARM vendor does nice ARM+SATA but its chip is hard to find, plus it is used in low-end NAS devices while ATOM is in the mid-range, it's more for the cost-saving instead of power-saving though. I was attracted by ARM lowest-power in the last, until I realized hard-drive is the one consumes most power and ARM does not do well with non-multimedia IO.
    - nixgeek 8y ago
      I’m not sure these statements are true, can you please link me to some data? WD Red 10TB maxes out around 5.7W [1] under heavy read-write activity and can use much less when idling. Intel Atom is typically in the 20W range for the parts commonly picked for NAS solutions, but can go as low as 8W too [2] and again when idling would use less. I don’t think they have anything <5W which would directly support your statement the HDD uses more power than the CPU. [1] https://www.wd.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_assets/eng/spec_data_sheet/2879-800002.pdf https://www.wd.com/content/dam/wdc/website/downloadable_asse... [2] https://www.anandtech.com/show/11144/intel-launches-16core-atom-c3000-cpus-for-nas-servers-vehicles https://www.anandtech.com/show/11144/intel-launches-16core-a...

ianai 8y ago

More cores means more flops. It’s going to take increased core “concentration” to get to exascale.

Twirrim 8y ago

ARM has some interesting power and heat advantages over Intel/AMD at the moment. Power and Cooling make up significant costs for cloud providers (and for many companies, for that matter), especially on the cloud storage side. For a fair number of the services, particularly ones with very bursting workloads, that superior idle CPU usage, and reduced heat output is _very_ interesting. It opens up a number of possibilities where "good enough" performance is actually good enough, and the extra rack density provides some strong advantages, _particularly_ in easily parallelisable workloads (or completely independent workloads happening in parallel, for example functions as a service) Amazon isn't just providing ARM CPU servers because of customer demand, and nor is it just to get leverage with Intel. That's not the way they tend to work. They're providing them so that they can leverage them in-house as well. Amazon just likes to take the position that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If it's good for them, there's bound to be customers that will find it good for them also, and as you sell it to customers, you get to those advantages of scale much quicker.

ianai 8y ago
Cooling and power dictate just how much computation you can squeeze out of a data center. There’s even a fancy CS theorem about it. ARM really makes x86 look antiquated in this regard. I don’t think arm chips are where they need to be, yet, but the history of technology is full of this sort of thing. Medium term, I expect Intel to look much more innovative than current. Long term, we’re either all dead because the robots won or uploaded to the cloud hive mind once our contributions to the universe outweigh our costs.
deepnotderp 8y ago
Arm has no intrinsic advantage over x86 ISA wise, for the most part. High performance arm cores consume similar energy to x86.
- floatboth 8y ago
  Not having to decode variable-length instructions is one advantage.