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Title is misleading, nothing suggests they are making an SoC. It's a job req for a systems engineer. Some possibilities: - FB is designing some non-compute d
by mik3y 13y ago
Title is misleading, nothing suggests they are making an SoC. It's a job req for a systems engineer.
Some possibilities:
- FB is designing some non-compute datacenter ARM devices. For example, environment monitoring, or a control plane processor for a network switch. (Most likely IMO.)
- FB is designing/bringing up mobile ARM devices, and the references to the datacenter are a smokescreen to keep the project under wraps. Even if they aren't taking the lead on the design, it's very useful to have engineers at this level eg to audit/collaborate on the work of a partner like HTC. Personally I think this is only a matter of time, if it hasn't long since begun.
- FB is building ARM servers. Edit: Originally wrote "very unlikely", but perhaps more plausible than first thought given FB's public statements on the matter (eg [1]).
[1] http://www.zdnet.com/facebook-stretches-arm-chips-in-datacentre-tests-7000004707/ http://www.zdnet.com/facebook-stretches-arm-chips-in-datacen...
- jmgrosen 13y agoWhy do you think that third situation unlikely? For example, HP will be releasing their customizable ARM server, Moonshot[0], later this year. Furthermore, Facebook's PHP VM, HHVM, already runs on 64-bit ARM[1]. [0]: http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/products/moonshot/index.aspx http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/products/... [1]: https://cards.linaro.org/browse/CARD-327 https://cards.linaro.org/browse/CARD-327
- mik3y 13y ago> Why do you think that third situation unlikely? Using a non-Intel architecture for general-purpose compute slices seems like, at minimum, a huge toolchain investment. Things are probably better now than they were five years ago (eg there seems to be LLVM support), but even assuming toolchain parity we're talking about having two flavors of each binary to maintain; a new constraint to consider when scheduling jobs; etc. (Edit: The HHVM ARM target is interesting, and mitigates some of these). It's not impossible, but IMO pretty unlikely compared to the other more "traditional" possibilities.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoThe tool chain is already pretty much there. That said Intel has been busting its hump to make sure it has a Xeon offering that is competitive watt for watt before serious server ARM chips make any inroads.
- justincormack 13y agoThats mostly true, but not 100%, eg the amount of optimisation may be less and code is less tested so may have more bugs, which matter at scale. There is quite a lot of assembly code in open source stuff, there was a survey here for the arm64 porting https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/OPTIM/Assembly https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/OPTIM/Assembly although much should be removed... (the 64 bit port could be what Facebook is interested in and thats way less supported...)
- vsampath 13y agoFacebook joined the Linaro Enterprise Group (watched the announcement at ARM TechCon in Santa Clara last year), indicating that they are at least interested in developing that necessary server environment. You're definitely right there is a large software maintenance cost, but that has to be weighed against any perf/watt savings (Anandtech's Calxeda review shows even early systems have potential http://www.anandtech.com/show/6757/calxedas-arm-server-tested http://www.anandtech.com/show/6757/calxedas-arm-server-teste...), being able to put pricing pressure on Intel, and not being tied to Intel as a single supply source.
- tonyplee 13y agoI use ubuntu for ARM everyday for 2 years already. There are 30k linux packages available for ARM. All of them installed via "apt-get install ...." I have not encounter an opensource package where I can't build from source for ARM. If you are just looking at console, vnc sessions, there are no different between ARM and x86 server, IMHO.
- wmf 13y agoFacebook's only been talking about ARM servers since 2010, but I guess that's just the misleading trade press for you.