5 ms·

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...
- izacus 8y ago
  Does it also cost the same? I know that Synology opts for ARM CPUs across their NAS line and only opts for Intel in most expensive models. Why if Atom is so good?
  - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
    Atoms are expensive, compared to ARM for budget needs.
pi-rat 8y ago
Is 24 cores really useful for a home file server?
- gmueckl 8y ago
  Probably not. A home server would likely not get a high a number of simultaneous requests that can be processed in parallel. I suspect that fewer more powerful cores would lead to higher performance in that particular case.
- chrisper 8y ago
  Yes if you put your services into VMs.
- ggm 8y ago
  If you can service fs calls on multiple cores, yes. The processing stack for a network fileysystems server is TCP or udp load, fs load and asynchronous clients. If it's just you, a couple of core does it. If it's you, your partner, a home pvr using network file streaming, kids playing music, I could believe some parallelism would help. Big memory for zfs arc would help too.

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...
izacus 8y ago
Does it also cost the same? I know that Synology opts for ARM CPUs across their NAS line and only opts for Intel in most expensive models. Why if Atom is so good?
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
  Atoms are expensive, compared to ARM for budget needs.

pi-rat 8y ago

Is 24 cores really useful for a home file server?

gmueckl 8y ago
Probably not. A home server would likely not get a high a number of simultaneous requests that can be processed in parallel. I suspect that fewer more powerful cores would lead to higher performance in that particular case.
chrisper 8y ago
Yes if you put your services into VMs.
ggm 8y ago
If you can service fs calls on multiple cores, yes. The processing stack for a network fileysystems server is TCP or udp load, fs load and asynchronous clients. If it's just you, a couple of core does it. If it's you, your partner, a home pvr using network file streaming, kids playing music, I could believe some parallelism would help. Big memory for zfs arc would help too.