9 ms·

The ARM server apocalypse

104 points by Ecio78 13y ago

VLM 13y ago
"... with that comes all the awe & terror of living with Windows." I had to LOL. Not even any point stating the obvious. That's good writing, can coin quite a phrase, unless thats a quote from somewhere. On the bigger picture, I donno. I've seen the infinite circular wheel of IT rotate around quite a few times and this overall idea sounds like a rehashed Transmeta marketing message. That didn't turn out so well last time, but maybe the situation is different this time. Probably not, but maybe.
- sp332 13y ago
  Transmeta's CPUs worked fine, but the market wasn't looking for underpowered mobile processors at the time. They sold off their IP to Intel who rolled it into the Pentium M which was the basis for the Core series.
  - akanaber 13y ago
    The Transmeta Crusoe (VLIW with software translation) was nothing like the Pentium M which was a derivative of the P6. The Pentium M did add some cleverness in fusing some of its hardware translated micro-ops but that's not terribly related to what Transmeta were doing. You may be misremembering the patent lawsuit Transmeta filed against Intel, long after the Pentium M had been released and Crusoe had failed commercially, basically as an alternative monetisation strategy. Intel did end up paying them to go away, but their IP was not "rolled into" Pentium M any more than Eolas's was into Internet Explorer.
    - sp332 13y ago
      Oh I didn't mean core architecture or instruction set or anything, just some of the power management.
  - stephengillie 13y ago
    The wikipedia page for Transmeta says they sued Intel for patent infringement in 2006, then licensed their tech to AMD & Nvidia, before being bought by another failed company, and having their patent portfolio wind up with our favorite patent troll, Intellectual Ventures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta#Timeline
    - sp332 13y ago
      Hm, what happened to this deal in 2008? http://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/components/microprocessors-and-dsps/transmeta-signs-intel-ip-deal-and-prepares-for-sale-2008-09/ http://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/components/microproces... The first agreement grants to Intel a non-exclusive license to use and exploit certain Transmeta technologies commercially. A second agreement is an amendment to a settlement and license agreement from December 2007, which granted to Intel a perpetual non-exclusive license to all Transmeta patents and patent applications. As a result it will receive from Intel a one-time, non-refundable payment of $91.5m in the third quarter of 2008.
  - btilly 13y ago
    What people don't realize is that Transmeta wasn't actually trying to develop underpowered mobile processors. That is just what they wound up trying to sell. The goal was a high performance architecture. The #1 barrier that they saw was heating. They therefore developed a very power efficient chip. They succeeded in that, but because they both took longer and were less efficient than hoped, they were underpowered compared to the market. However there was a niche that they could sell to. From there their hope was that, being a fundamentally simpler chip, they could iterate faster. That would mean that eventually they would catch up on performance. Unfortunately for them, Intel's greater resources and experience meant that they iterated faster than Transmeta, despite having a much more complex architecture. Transmeta was always going to either change the world or sink without a trace. They sank without a trace. But it was an interesting approach and was worth a try.
    - VLM 13y ago
      The transmeta saga is a long and varied one, and of the many phases of it, this is the one I was referring to. Not becoming a patent troll or shipping cell phone procs or whatever once they realized it wasn't going to work on servers and started scrambling to anything to keep head above water. The transmeta cpu on servers pitch is almost word for word the ARM cpu on servers pitch, just maybe a dozen or so years later. This PR pitch might even work someday, maybe even this time. Just saying I've heard it all before and last time I heard it, it turned out this way... From an engineering standpoint it seems almost impossible to optimize for both performance for this new market AND heat/power for your traditional market unless your R+D budget is absolutely insane compared to competitors only optimizing for one or the other. Note that R+D budget dollar value has almost no relationship with quantity shipped units being discussed in its place, probably because the real numbers are unfavorable.
t05ter 13y ago
The article is pretty shallow in the sense that it just casually glosses over a few key characteristics that make the server/datacenter space an interesting battlefield for the current round of architecture wars. It will be an interesting next couple of years. Intel didn't sit on their hands with this one, like they did with the mobile market. They saw the potential for ARM SoCs, using a large number of smaller/lighter cores to take market share in things like simple web servers or hosting static data. Their response was their Atom based "Centerton" which is cannibalizing their own Xeon line. As for more CPU performance intensive tasks, ARM has yet to prove itself in the performance/watt arena, especially in the 64-bit realm of server features, like error correcting code or RAS. Most sys admins building infrastructure like to play things safe, since they have to live with their decisions for years. It seems like ARMs biggest advantage will be price, and the SoC business model of custom tailoring silicon for a customer's needs.
luu 13y ago
The business case for serving web content isn't as strong as you might think from a back of the envelope calculation about cost/power vs. performance. It's true that you'll find that you can get more throughput per cost with ARM/Atom (mostly due to the lower power, but also because the machines are cheaper), but, when you actually do it you'll find that latency is significantly higher, if you compare ARM/Atom boxes with low load vs. fast x86 machines with high utilization [1]. An argument people often make is that ARM is going to catch x86. Sure, possibly, but why wouldn't you expect x86 to catch ARM? [2] A lesson that people seem to have to keep re-learning, over and over again, is that latency matters a lot on the web. A few ms increase in latency has a measurable effect on your income, as people just close the webpage and click elsewhere. A significant increase in latency is disastrous. [1] http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~vjreddi/UT/Publications/Entries/2011/8/1_Mobile_Processors_for_Energy-Efficient_Web_Search,_In__i_IEEE_Transactions_on_Computer_Systems_(TOCS)__i_,_Vol._29,_No._4,_Article_9,_August_2011._files/reddi2011-tocs.pdf http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~vjreddi/UT/Publications/Entries.... This paper describes a way you can use low-power boxes to get better results for the same cost, but it doesn't involve simply swapping your core i5s with Atoms or ARMs, which is what a lot of people seem to want to do. [2] One of the major lessons computer architects learned perhaps 10-15 years ago is that the instruction set just doesn't matter that much, compared to the microarchitecture, the manufacturing process, and the quality of the circuit design. Intel has a decisive advantage in manufacturing that's been growing for approximately two decades, ARM doesn't even try to compete in circuit design with full-custom design or fancy circuit techniques, so that leaves the microarchitecture. Although I'd disagree, you might make a case that ARM simply has better architects, and that ARM would produce a better design than Intel if they targeted the exact same space. But, I doubt you'd try to make the case that you'd expect ARM's design to be so superior that it will obviously overcome Intel's other advantages. Another case you might make is that Intel simply won't target the same space, to avoid cannibalizing their own market, but, in addition to obviously moving towards that space with Atom, they have a history of ruthlessness that makes that seem unlikely. Intel used to be a dominant player in the DRAM industry, but they killed off their DRAM business when they were a leader in the field, because they recognized that it would become a commodity industry. After becoming a market leader in SRAMs, one of the competitors invented flash; they realized the significance and focused on flash and microprocessors, while, again, killing off what was (then) a major cash cow. It's very hard to imagine Intel just sitting and slowly losing their dominance of the microprocessor industry, ending up with a position like IBM or Sun. They've never done that in the past, so why would you expect them to start now?
berkut 13y ago
This is fine for VMs and maybe low-load servers, but the problem for high-performance servers is ARM sucks memory-wise as they don't have the patents on the cache hierarchies that Intel has (and AMD can use), and thus have very limited cache systems. AMD's future entry into the ARM market might change this, as they can use these patents.
hapless 13y ago
"If, by 2015, 64-Bit ARM makes it within striking distance of x86 server processor performance [...]" There isn't a big enough rolleyes in the universe. ARM's sink-or-swim pitch points will be will be power consumption and density. Competition on performance isn't even a choice. x86 server buys, today, are often about how much RAM I can get in a rack unit. If Aarch64 servers can get enough RAM tied to a chip, and make memory access fast enough, there's a pitch to be made based on ultra low-power, high-density virt hosts. If they can't, they remain novelties for "hyperscale" hosting of static content and toy sites.
- akiselev 13y ago
  Yeah the chance of ARM improving their architecture to match 10nm SoCs (2015 is the release date for Intel's 10nm line and they said that the will push their SoCs to the latest tech), let alone 2015 x86 is laughable. Intel's mad focus on power consumption might catch up to within like 10-50% of ARM at 25-100% better performance.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
glurgh 13y ago
Someone's been just about to beat Intel at the high-performance CPU game, any day now, for a couple of decades. The AIM (Apple/IBM/Motorola) alliance was very fond of hockeystick graphs showing their planned crushing of other CPUs (shown as a flatter line, usually coyly labeled 'CISC'), for instance, back in the early 90s. It's not an impossible thing but given the track record of such claims and predictions, the only comment they should elicit is 'Shut up and show me the silicon'
- venomsnake 13y ago
  If you throw enough "This time it is different" on the web a person may guess one. When i shop for a new desktop I feel I am essentially paying intel tax. Since AMD begun to play catch up the intel desktop product line moved from providing value for the customer to extracting consumer surplus more efficiently. I would be surprised if this is not the case in the server market. The lack of VT-d on K processors and the totally locked other CPUs are a good example. Nobody likes being milked which can create some desire to diversify from intel even if the savings are not enormous.
  - frozenport 13y ago
    Are yoy saying Dell won't buy Intel because Intel is evil? Recently China started to wind down its anti-Intel stance in pqrt due to a new supercomputer deal.
    - venomsnake 13y ago
      Dell don't buy intel. They resell intel so it is all the same for them. They will gladly resell whatever someone decides to buy. But every time there is a new chip on the market the big cloud operators and big end clients for intel chips take calculators and begin to evaluate very carefully. Also intel are not evil. They just milk their customers.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  Numerous examples exist of firms beating Intel at creating high-performance CPU's. Nobody can best them at business though. Otellini spent just enough on R&D to keep Intel caught up with its competitors. It will be interesting to see what they do without him.
PaulHoule 13y ago
Ordinary Windows 8 on x86 has the same waves of instability as the author remarks about ARM builds. I've noticed weird and wonderful changes in Windows 8 such as a situation that would have been an intermittent BSOD before now causes a instant and deliberate reboot and an attempt to, as much as possible, pretend it didn't happen. I say it's about time.
- voltagex_ 13y ago
  What? There's still going to be memory.dmp somewhere in c:\windows that'll tell you what happened.
  - PaulHoule 13y ago
    sure, but it's just the right thing, the Unix thing to do.
anizan 13y ago
ARM SoCs have big problems when it comes to memory throughput which is a big part of a server's performance. i ran http://code.google.com/p/byte-unixbench/ http://code.google.com/p/byte-unixbench/ on a Exynos 4412 SoC and some of the memory dependent results was horrendous.
- timthorn 13y ago
  Try a server optimised SoC rather than a mobile one; the optimisations are somewhat different.
Swannie 13y ago
Am I being naive here? Isn't the whole point of virtualisation, that I can put 50 "average" VMs onto a top-end server, I can put 200 "small" VMs onto it, or 1000s of lightweight LXC containers. What limitation are ARM micro-servers going to overcome? CPU bound tasks? No. Memory bound tasks? Well, with memory extension techniques, x86 can have huge quantities of memory, no not so much. So IO bound tasks? Maybe... Is there something else I missed? Workload per watt? Power management in x86 processors, chipsets, and general server design is getting better all the time. Of course, there are things where FPGA's or ASICs will win every time... so what is it that I get with an ARM that I can't get with a FPGA + x86? Or is it more that ARM SoC + FPGA/ASIC is where things get attractive?
- vardump 13y ago
  Memcached/redis sounds like something ARM CPUs might be good at. Maybe execution performance predictability and better isolation of running a single instance on bare metal ARMv8 vs. a hypervisor running 50 instances on x86? In my experience, performance varies wildly on virtualized systems. Maybe x86 VM worst case can be worse than running on bare metal on ARM? Anything where you need only a few instances and have relatively low performance requirements, like SOHO servers? I'd love to have something generic that consumes just a few watts but could do diverse tasks from routing, VPN, file serving, etc. at 500+ Mbps. I guess it remains to be seen what kind of niche ARM servers will carve. I'm excited to try them out, to see how far they can be pushed.
moconnor 13y ago
Intel's Xeon Phi cards pack 240 x86 CPUs per card at very low power per core. You can run Linux on them. Soon we'll be serving web content and VMs on them. The best bang-per-watt supercomputer in the world right now is a ton of Xeon hosts with 2 of these cards per machine. We've got a stack of then in the office; they're pretty interesting.
- kaib 13y ago
  One important observation is that the interconnect out of the Phi cards is note very good. While the interconnect inside Phi is pretty good the bandwidth to communicate with other computing facilities is through the PCIe bus. This places the Phi cards close to GPU's very good at graphics and a few specialized problems like protein folding but not supercomputers that can tackle hard problems like sparse matrix solving.
- marshray 13y ago
  Have you tried benchmarking serving dynamic web content on them?
- lgeek 13y ago
  > Intel's Xeon Phi cards pack 240 x86 CPUs per card > We've got a stack of then in the office; they're pretty interesting. That's funny, seeing as the only Phi coprocessor you can buy right now only has 60 cores [0]. I mean, what Intel has done is quite impressive, but let's not exaggerate. [0] http://ark.intel.com/products/71992/Intel-Xeon-Phi-Coprocessor-5110P-8GB-1_053-GHz-60-core http://ark.intel.com/products/71992/Intel-Xeon-Phi-Coprocess...
Qantourisc 13y ago
They say it only cost 30M to make a ARM, but how much would it cost to make one that runs at the same practical speed then a x86 ? That's IMO the real question ...
Qantourisc 13y ago
Ow I'd also like an ARM that can emulate x86 at native speed please. Otherwise a lot of stuff will stop running :)
pbharrin 13y ago
I think he meant TSMC when he said TWSC.
csense 13y ago
Modern websites have a lot of moving parts, and they all have to move to ARM before you can think about changing your server architecture. Do proprietary databases run on ARM? What about the language your web application is written in? Last I heard (~6 months ago) official ARM Java is available for the bleeding edge, I'm not sure if it's made it into an official major release yet. Then there's the incompatible softfloat / hardfloat divide, just to make life fun for those who write JIT compilers (and regular compilers).

104 points by Ecio78 13y ago

VLM 13y ago

"... with that comes all the awe & terror of living with Windows." I had to LOL. Not even any point stating the obvious. That's good writing, can coin quite a phrase, unless thats a quote from somewhere. On the bigger picture, I donno. I've seen the infinite circular wheel of IT rotate around quite a few times and this overall idea sounds like a rehashed Transmeta marketing message. That didn't turn out so well last time, but maybe the situation is different this time. Probably not, but maybe.

sp332 13y ago
Transmeta's CPUs worked fine, but the market wasn't looking for underpowered mobile processors at the time. They sold off their IP to Intel who rolled it into the Pentium M which was the basis for the Core series.
- akanaber 13y ago
  The Transmeta Crusoe (VLIW with software translation) was nothing like the Pentium M which was a derivative of the P6. The Pentium M did add some cleverness in fusing some of its hardware translated micro-ops but that's not terribly related to what Transmeta were doing. You may be misremembering the patent lawsuit Transmeta filed against Intel, long after the Pentium M had been released and Crusoe had failed commercially, basically as an alternative monetisation strategy. Intel did end up paying them to go away, but their IP was not "rolled into" Pentium M any more than Eolas's was into Internet Explorer.
  - sp332 13y ago
    Oh I didn't mean core architecture or instruction set or anything, just some of the power management.
- stephengillie 13y ago
  The wikipedia page for Transmeta says they sued Intel for patent infringement in 2006, then licensed their tech to AMD & Nvidia, before being bought by another failed company, and having their patent portfolio wind up with our favorite patent troll, Intellectual Ventures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta#Timeline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmeta#Timeline
  - sp332 13y ago
    Hm, what happened to this deal in 2008? http://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/components/microprocessors-and-dsps/transmeta-signs-intel-ip-deal-and-prepares-for-sale-2008-09/ http://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/components/microproces... The first agreement grants to Intel a non-exclusive license to use and exploit certain Transmeta technologies commercially. A second agreement is an amendment to a settlement and license agreement from December 2007, which granted to Intel a perpetual non-exclusive license to all Transmeta patents and patent applications. As a result it will receive from Intel a one-time, non-refundable payment of $91.5m in the third quarter of 2008.
- btilly 13y ago
  What people don't realize is that Transmeta wasn't actually trying to develop underpowered mobile processors. That is just what they wound up trying to sell. The goal was a high performance architecture. The #1 barrier that they saw was heating. They therefore developed a very power efficient chip. They succeeded in that, but because they both took longer and were less efficient than hoped, they were underpowered compared to the market. However there was a niche that they could sell to. From there their hope was that, being a fundamentally simpler chip, they could iterate faster. That would mean that eventually they would catch up on performance. Unfortunately for them, Intel's greater resources and experience meant that they iterated faster than Transmeta, despite having a much more complex architecture. Transmeta was always going to either change the world or sink without a trace. They sank without a trace. But it was an interesting approach and was worth a try.
  - VLM 13y ago
    The transmeta saga is a long and varied one, and of the many phases of it, this is the one I was referring to. Not becoming a patent troll or shipping cell phone procs or whatever once they realized it wasn't going to work on servers and started scrambling to anything to keep head above water. The transmeta cpu on servers pitch is almost word for word the ARM cpu on servers pitch, just maybe a dozen or so years later. This PR pitch might even work someday, maybe even this time. Just saying I've heard it all before and last time I heard it, it turned out this way... From an engineering standpoint it seems almost impossible to optimize for both performance for this new market AND heat/power for your traditional market unless your R+D budget is absolutely insane compared to competitors only optimizing for one or the other. Note that R+D budget dollar value has almost no relationship with quantity shipped units being discussed in its place, probably because the real numbers are unfavorable.

t05ter 13y ago

The article is pretty shallow in the sense that it just casually glosses over a few key characteristics that make the server/datacenter space an interesting battlefield for the current round of architecture wars. It will be an interesting next couple of years. Intel didn't sit on their hands with this one, like they did with the mobile market. They saw the potential for ARM SoCs, using a large number of smaller/lighter cores to take market share in things like simple web servers or hosting static data. Their response was their Atom based "Centerton" which is cannibalizing their own Xeon line. As for more CPU performance intensive tasks, ARM has yet to prove itself in the performance/watt arena, especially in the 64-bit realm of server features, like error correcting code or RAS. Most sys admins building infrastructure like to play things safe, since they have to live with their decisions for years. It seems like ARMs biggest advantage will be price, and the SoC business model of custom tailoring silicon for a customer's needs.

luu 13y ago

The business case for serving web content isn't as strong as you might think from a back of the envelope calculation about cost/power vs. performance. It's true that you'll find that you can get more throughput per cost with ARM/Atom (mostly due to the lower power, but also because the machines are cheaper), but, when you actually do it you'll find that latency is significantly higher, if you compare ARM/Atom boxes with low load vs. fast x86 machines with high utilization [1]. An argument people often make is that ARM is going to catch x86. Sure, possibly, but why wouldn't you expect x86 to catch ARM? [2] A lesson that people seem to have to keep re-learning, over and over again, is that latency matters a lot on the web. A few ms increase in latency has a measurable effect on your income, as people just close the webpage and click elsewhere. A significant increase in latency is disastrous. [1] http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~vjreddi/UT/Publications/Entries/2011/8/1_Mobile_Processors_for_Energy-Efficient_Web_Search,_In__i_IEEE_Transactions_on_Computer_Systems_(TOCS)__i_,_Vol._29,_No._4,_Article_9,_August_2011._files/reddi2011-tocs.pdf http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~vjreddi/UT/Publications/Entries.... This paper describes a way you can use low-power boxes to get better results for the same cost, but it doesn't involve simply swapping your core i5s with Atoms or ARMs, which is what a lot of people seem to want to do. [2] One of the major lessons computer architects learned perhaps 10-15 years ago is that the instruction set just doesn't matter that much, compared to the microarchitecture, the manufacturing process, and the quality of the circuit design. Intel has a decisive advantage in manufacturing that's been growing for approximately two decades, ARM doesn't even try to compete in circuit design with full-custom design or fancy circuit techniques, so that leaves the microarchitecture. Although I'd disagree, you might make a case that ARM simply has better architects, and that ARM would produce a better design than Intel if they targeted the exact same space. But, I doubt you'd try to make the case that you'd expect ARM's design to be so superior that it will obviously overcome Intel's other advantages. Another case you might make is that Intel simply won't target the same space, to avoid cannibalizing their own market, but, in addition to obviously moving towards that space with Atom, they have a history of ruthlessness that makes that seem unlikely. Intel used to be a dominant player in the DRAM industry, but they killed off their DRAM business when they were a leader in the field, because they recognized that it would become a commodity industry. After becoming a market leader in SRAMs, one of the competitors invented flash; they realized the significance and focused on flash and microprocessors, while, again, killing off what was (then) a major cash cow. It's very hard to imagine Intel just sitting and slowly losing their dominance of the microprocessor industry, ending up with a position like IBM or Sun. They've never done that in the past, so why would you expect them to start now?

berkut 13y ago

This is fine for VMs and maybe low-load servers, but the problem for high-performance servers is ARM sucks memory-wise as they don't have the patents on the cache hierarchies that Intel has (and AMD can use), and thus have very limited cache systems. AMD's future entry into the ARM market might change this, as they can use these patents.

hapless 13y ago

"If, by 2015, 64-Bit ARM makes it within striking distance of x86 server processor performance [...]" There isn't a big enough rolleyes in the universe. ARM's sink-or-swim pitch points will be will be power consumption and density. Competition on performance isn't even a choice. x86 server buys, today, are often about how much RAM I can get in a rack unit. If Aarch64 servers can get enough RAM tied to a chip, and make memory access fast enough, there's a pitch to be made based on ultra low-power, high-density virt hosts. If they can't, they remain novelties for "hyperscale" hosting of static content and toy sites.

akiselev 13y ago
Yeah the chance of ARM improving their architecture to match 10nm SoCs (2015 is the release date for Intel's 10nm line and they said that the will push their SoCs to the latest tech), let alone 2015 x86 is laughable. Intel's mad focus on power consumption might catch up to within like 10-50% of ARM at 25-100% better performance.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

glurgh 13y ago

Someone's been just about to beat Intel at the high-performance CPU game, any day now, for a couple of decades. The AIM (Apple/IBM/Motorola) alliance was very fond of hockeystick graphs showing their planned crushing of other CPUs (shown as a flatter line, usually coyly labeled 'CISC'), for instance, back in the early 90s. It's not an impossible thing but given the track record of such claims and predictions, the only comment they should elicit is 'Shut up and show me the silicon'

venomsnake 13y ago
If you throw enough "This time it is different" on the web a person may guess one. When i shop for a new desktop I feel I am essentially paying intel tax. Since AMD begun to play catch up the intel desktop product line moved from providing value for the customer to extracting consumer surplus more efficiently. I would be surprised if this is not the case in the server market. The lack of VT-d on K processors and the totally locked other CPUs are a good example. Nobody likes being milked which can create some desire to diversify from intel even if the savings are not enormous.
- frozenport 13y ago
  Are yoy saying Dell won't buy Intel because Intel is evil? Recently China started to wind down its anti-Intel stance in pqrt due to a new supercomputer deal.
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    Dell don't buy intel. They resell intel so it is all the same for them. They will gladly resell whatever someone decides to buy. But every time there is a new chip on the market the big cloud operators and big end clients for intel chips take calculators and begin to evaluate very carefully. Also intel are not evil. They just milk their customers.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
Numerous examples exist of firms beating Intel at creating high-performance CPU's. Nobody can best them at business though. Otellini spent just enough on R&D to keep Intel caught up with its competitors. It will be interesting to see what they do without him.

PaulHoule 13y ago

Ordinary Windows 8 on x86 has the same waves of instability as the author remarks about ARM builds. I've noticed weird and wonderful changes in Windows 8 such as a situation that would have been an intermittent BSOD before now causes a instant and deliberate reboot and an attempt to, as much as possible, pretend it didn't happen. I say it's about time.

voltagex_ 13y ago
What? There's still going to be memory.dmp somewhere in c:\windows that'll tell you what happened.
- PaulHoule 13y ago
  sure, but it's just the right thing, the Unix thing to do.

anizan 13y ago

ARM SoCs have big problems when it comes to memory throughput which is a big part of a server's performance. i ran http://code.google.com/p/byte-unixbench/ http://code.google.com/p/byte-unixbench/ on a Exynos 4412 SoC and some of the memory dependent results was horrendous.

timthorn 13y ago
Try a server optimised SoC rather than a mobile one; the optimisations are somewhat different.

Swannie 13y ago

Am I being naive here? Isn't the whole point of virtualisation, that I can put 50 "average" VMs onto a top-end server, I can put 200 "small" VMs onto it, or 1000s of lightweight LXC containers. What limitation are ARM micro-servers going to overcome? CPU bound tasks? No. Memory bound tasks? Well, with memory extension techniques, x86 can have huge quantities of memory, no not so much. So IO bound tasks? Maybe... Is there something else I missed? Workload per watt? Power management in x86 processors, chipsets, and general server design is getting better all the time. Of course, there are things where FPGA's or ASICs will win every time... so what is it that I get with an ARM that I can't get with a FPGA + x86? Or is it more that ARM SoC + FPGA/ASIC is where things get attractive?

vardump 13y ago
Memcached/redis sounds like something ARM CPUs might be good at. Maybe execution performance predictability and better isolation of running a single instance on bare metal ARMv8 vs. a hypervisor running 50 instances on x86? In my experience, performance varies wildly on virtualized systems. Maybe x86 VM worst case can be worse than running on bare metal on ARM? Anything where you need only a few instances and have relatively low performance requirements, like SOHO servers? I'd love to have something generic that consumes just a few watts but could do diverse tasks from routing, VPN, file serving, etc. at 500+ Mbps. I guess it remains to be seen what kind of niche ARM servers will carve. I'm excited to try them out, to see how far they can be pushed.

moconnor 13y ago

Intel's Xeon Phi cards pack 240 x86 CPUs per card at very low power per core. You can run Linux on them. Soon we'll be serving web content and VMs on them. The best bang-per-watt supercomputer in the world right now is a ton of Xeon hosts with 2 of these cards per machine. We've got a stack of then in the office; they're pretty interesting.

kaib 13y ago
One important observation is that the interconnect out of the Phi cards is note very good. While the interconnect inside Phi is pretty good the bandwidth to communicate with other computing facilities is through the PCIe bus. This places the Phi cards close to GPU's very good at graphics and a few specialized problems like protein folding but not supercomputers that can tackle hard problems like sparse matrix solving.
marshray 13y ago
Have you tried benchmarking serving dynamic web content on them?
lgeek 13y ago
> Intel's Xeon Phi cards pack 240 x86 CPUs per card > We've got a stack of then in the office; they're pretty interesting. That's funny, seeing as the only Phi coprocessor you can buy right now only has 60 cores [0]. I mean, what Intel has done is quite impressive, but let's not exaggerate. [0] http://ark.intel.com/products/71992/Intel-Xeon-Phi-Coprocessor-5110P-8GB-1_053-GHz-60-core http://ark.intel.com/products/71992/Intel-Xeon-Phi-Coprocess...

Qantourisc 13y ago

They say it only cost 30M to make a ARM, but how much would it cost to make one that runs at the same practical speed then a x86 ? That's IMO the real question ...

Qantourisc 13y ago

Ow I'd also like an ARM that can emulate x86 at native speed please. Otherwise a lot of stuff will stop running :)

pbharrin 13y ago

I think he meant TSMC when he said TWSC.

csense 13y ago

Modern websites have a lot of moving parts, and they all have to move to ARM before you can think about changing your server architecture. Do proprietary databases run on ARM? What about the language your web application is written in? Last I heard (~6 months ago) official ARM Java is available for the bleeding edge, I'm not sure if it's made it into an official major release yet. Then there's the incompatible softfloat / hardfloat divide, just to make life fun for those who write JIT compilers (and regular compilers).