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This already exists. This already existed in the 90s, and was in fact very normal. Sun, DEC/compaq, HP, IBM, etc all sold systems like this. Why does intel a

This already exists. This already existed in the 90s, and was in fact very normal. Sun, DEC/compaq, HP, IBM, etc all sold systems like this. Why does intel always pretend doing something 20 years late is innovation?

ajross 13y ago
That's true, but really only in a specious way. If you want to argue that sort of logic, then people were building machines "like this" back in the 60's when the "rack" was a big card cage into which you could plug (sometimes) arbitrary amounts of application-specific CPU/memory/storage/IO resources. But what's actually happening is that Intel is building a fabric interconnect which can serve data at DRAM-bandwidth-or-higher speeds. And that's certainly something that hasn't been done in the modern world. The headline might lead you to believe it's the architectural idea that's the new thing here, but it's really the pure technology that's the interesting bit.
- papsosouid 13y ago
  >But what's actually happening is that Intel is building a fabric interconnect which can serve data at DRAM-bandwidth-or-higher speeds Yes, that is exactly what I am talking about. It was perfectly normal to purchase systems in the 90s that worked that way. A cabinet powered by a single power node, and you plugged in CPU nodes, memory nodes, I/O nodes, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_7000/10000_AXP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_7000/10000_AXP
  - ajross 13y ago
    Right. And yet people stopped doing that when 512 bit wide cache lines pulling at 30-60MHz became the norm. The interconnect just wasn't fast enough, and everything moved onto a single board and stayed there. For almost 20 years the best we've been able to do are things like Infiniband that are far slower than on-board DRAM. Now (apparently) there's a new interconnect that can do the job. That's news, not "same old boring stuff".
    - papsosouid 13y ago
      What do you mean right? You said this is different, I pointed out that it is literally exactly the same. That is not agreement. The rest of your post is simply factually incorrect. People did not stop doing that, such systems continued to exist through the 90s and 2000s. They still exist right now. They became less common, but that had nothing to do with "the interconnect just wasn't fast enough". It was because intel CPUs became the fastest available, and racks full of small intel based systems were (and are) massively cheaper and entirely sufficient for the vast majority of uses. The speed of interconnect fabric kept up just fine.
    - zurn 13y ago
      > For almost 20 years the best we've been able to do are things like Infiniband that are far slower than on-board DRAM The SGI shared-memory big iron machines (Origin & Altix) are more recent and can have memory-only nodes. The most recent NUMA Altix was launched in 2009, I'm not sure if the later machines managed to keep the Origin 2k era goal of having as much remote memory bandwidth as local. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMAlink http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMAlink
karlkatzke 13y ago
Sun currently builds systems like this in the high end of it's M range. (M8000, M9000) I'm sure that IBM and everyone else make them as well.
- papsosouid 13y ago
  Not Sun anymore sadly, but yeah oracle, IBM, HP all still make systems like that.

ajross 13y ago

That's true, but really only in a specious way. If you want to argue that sort of logic, then people were building machines "like this" back in the 60's when the "rack" was a big card cage into which you could plug (sometimes) arbitrary amounts of application-specific CPU/memory/storage/IO resources. But what's actually happening is that Intel is building a fabric interconnect which can serve data at DRAM-bandwidth-or-higher speeds. And that's certainly something that hasn't been done in the modern world. The headline might lead you to believe it's the architectural idea that's the new thing here, but it's really the pure technology that's the interesting bit.

papsosouid 13y ago
>But what's actually happening is that Intel is building a fabric interconnect which can serve data at DRAM-bandwidth-or-higher speeds Yes, that is exactly what I am talking about. It was perfectly normal to purchase systems in the 90s that worked that way. A cabinet powered by a single power node, and you plugged in CPU nodes, memory nodes, I/O nodes, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_7000/10000_AXP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_7000/10000_AXP
- ajross 13y ago
  Right. And yet people stopped doing that when 512 bit wide cache lines pulling at 30-60MHz became the norm. The interconnect just wasn't fast enough, and everything moved onto a single board and stayed there. For almost 20 years the best we've been able to do are things like Infiniband that are far slower than on-board DRAM. Now (apparently) there's a new interconnect that can do the job. That's news, not "same old boring stuff".
  - papsosouid 13y ago
    What do you mean right? You said this is different, I pointed out that it is literally exactly the same. That is not agreement. The rest of your post is simply factually incorrect. People did not stop doing that, such systems continued to exist through the 90s and 2000s. They still exist right now. They became less common, but that had nothing to do with "the interconnect just wasn't fast enough". It was because intel CPUs became the fastest available, and racks full of small intel based systems were (and are) massively cheaper and entirely sufficient for the vast majority of uses. The speed of interconnect fabric kept up just fine.
  - zurn 13y ago
    > For almost 20 years the best we've been able to do are things like Infiniband that are far slower than on-board DRAM The SGI shared-memory big iron machines (Origin & Altix) are more recent and can have memory-only nodes. The most recent NUMA Altix was launched in 2009, I'm not sure if the later machines managed to keep the Origin 2k era goal of having as much remote memory bandwidth as local. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMAlink http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMAlink

karlkatzke 13y ago

Sun currently builds systems like this in the high end of it's M range. (M8000, M9000) I'm sure that IBM and everyone else make them as well.

papsosouid 13y ago
Not Sun anymore sadly, but yeah oracle, IBM, HP all still make systems like that.