10 ms·

ARM 64 Bit Server CPU Development Kit

60 points by zeit_geist 12y ago

jevinskie 12y ago
Does anyone know the price? I don't feel like registering just to see it.
- mrbill 12y ago
  Says here $5K. http://www.legitreviews.com/hands-on-with-the-appliedmicro-x-gene-x-c1-server-development-kit_127557 http://www.legitreviews.com/hands-on-with-the-appliedmicro-x...
  - justincormack 12y ago
    Yes thats the level I have seen quoted. I think I will wait 9 months and get one for 10% of the price...
stefantalpalaru 12y ago
How many cores?
- augustl 12y ago
  This is all I could find: > At the SoC level, APM plans to integrate many of these CPU cores onto a single package. The range is officially 2 - 128 cores, although I expect we'll see something more reasonable than the extremes. Feom http://www.anandtech.com/show/5098/applied-micros-xgene-the-first-armv8-soc http://www.anandtech.com/show/5098/applied-micros-xgene-the-...
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Interesting, I kind of expected AMD to be first out the gate with one. From : http://www.zdnet.com/applied-micro-canonical-claim-the-first-arm-64-bit-server-production-software-deployment-7000029958/ http://www.zdnet.com/applied-micro-canonical-claim-the-first... "The X-Gene is an ARMv8 64-bit Server-on-a-Chip package running at up to 2.4GHz. It combines 10/40 Gigabit mixed signal I/O with what AMCC calls an enterprise-class memory subsystem. Compared to x86 architectures, AMCC claims that it delivers four-times the processor density while using less than 50 percent of the power and delivering comparable-to-better overall performance." The picture shows multiple cores, but not how many. What struck me though is that they are pitching "density and less power", presumably they mean you can put twice as many of these servers in the same power foot print that you currently put x86 machines and get 8x (4x * 2) the computing power. In case you are wondering, that is a 'super computer' pitch, it tickles the pain points of these arrays of super computers, but sadly it does not hit the 'web services' pain points. I'd love it if they said, 1TB of ECC protected RAM, dual 10G ethernet, and 32 full speed independent 6GB SATA channels on each server unit. That would help me make a more responsive web infrastructure.
- dragontamer 12y ago
  AMD can't be the "first one out the gate" when the The Boston Virdis by Calexdia came out years ago. http://www.boston.co.uk/solutions/viridis/default.aspx http://www.boston.co.uk/solutions/viridis/default.aspx AMD however, with its partnership with SeaMicro, is going to be a force to be reckoned with. AMD has experience in the datacenter, while all these other ARM companies don't.
  - trsohmers 12y ago
    But that was 32 bit ARMv7 Cortex A9 based, shipped in 2013 with 2011/2012 specs, and twice as much than a comparable Intel based system. And that is why Calxeda is now dead. Also: AMD doesn't just have a partnership with SeaMicro, they bought them back in 2012.
    - dragontamer 12y ago
      I know. My point is that the title of "First ARM Server" has already been taken. And frankly, "First" is a dubious advantage. For ARM systems to be competitive, they must deliver power, performance, and cost-efficiency beyond Intel Xeons (including the new Intel Atom line of Xeons). Otherwise, x86 dominance in the datacenter will continue. These ARM servers are interesting and all... but honestly, a Dell Poweredge seems to deliver much more at a lower cost. Brand-new Poweredge Racks are as low as $700 (R220), Poweredge Xeons start at $1000. So what is a fair price for an X-Gene? If its anything more than $400, I'm thinking the old Intel solution will be superior. (Even a Celeron will outperform an ARM)
- sliverstorm 12y ago
  AMD is on the way: http://techreport.com/news/26419/amd-demos-seattle-its-first-arm-based-server-chip http://techreport.com/news/26419/amd-demos-seattle-its-first... From the sound of things the X-Gene will be available for general retail sooner, but they are both coming soon.
- justizin 12y ago
  That's not necessarily true, you don't need 10G ethernet to most nodes in practice, and you don't typically need dual unless you are trying to run active/passive. smaller footprint nodes like this often are, themselves, the failure unit. most workloads don't need much storage except on the DB end, app servers and esp things like memcache already are run on large non-x86 tiers. Facebook, notably, uses Tilera machines for memcache last I heard. A TB of RAM, sure, but it's a bit greedy to say nothing less than that is of much use, when 128GB of RAM in a single machine is a relatively recent advancement. Also note: these are development kits. This is presumably to begin targeting ARM, make sure your code runs reliably. Anything you can do with a TB of RAM and 32 full speed SATA channels you can develop on 4GB of RAM with one drive, as Every_Linux_Box_Ever has proven.
Gracana 12y ago
Well that's far too much money for me to spend, but I am excited to see it. Can anyone comment on whether or not ARMv8 is beneficial in embedded environments with limited memory? Will we eventually see self-contained ARMv8 microcontrollers?
- wmf 12y ago
  ARMv8 is generally faster than ARMv7 although it depends on the program.
- justincormack 12y ago
  why do you want a 64 bit microcontroller?
  - Gracana 12y ago
    I don't necessarily, I'm just curious if there's anything in the architecture that would benefit applications where 64 bit addressing isn't a requirement.
    - justincormack 12y ago
      Well its a clean new design basically the first classic new RISC design for a while, but 64 bit instructions are going to take up more space generally so it is unlikely anyone will make a microcontroller - 32 bit microcontrollers are still pretty new...
rwmj 12y ago
http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/red-hat-64-bit-arm-developer-preview-jon-masterss-keynote-at-linaro-asia/#content http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/red-hat-64-bit-arm-deve... Jon Masters' keynote at Linaro Asia earlier this year. Jon is heading Red Hat's efforts on aarch64. In brief he wants: - upstream kernels only, single kernel boots on all manufacturers' hardware (no kernel zoo like on ARM 32 bit) - UEFI + ACPI (no device tree nonsense)
Nexxxeh 12y ago
How much is (was) it? When I visit the site, it asks me to register before I can get any further.
sn 12y ago
We made a (failed) play to get our hands on an AMD opteron devkit in order to talk about running xen on it. I did some research regarding arm64 + xen and put some notes up here http://blog.prgmr.com/xenophobia/2014/05/survey-of-xen-and-arm-servers.html http://blog.prgmr.com/xenophobia/2014/05/survey-of-xen-and-a... in case anyone is interested.

60 points by zeit_geist 12y ago

jevinskie 12y ago

Does anyone know the price? I don't feel like registering just to see it.

mrbill 12y ago
Says here $5K. http://www.legitreviews.com/hands-on-with-the-appliedmicro-x-gene-x-c1-server-development-kit_127557 http://www.legitreviews.com/hands-on-with-the-appliedmicro-x...
- justincormack 12y ago
  Yes thats the level I have seen quoted. I think I will wait 9 months and get one for 10% of the price...

stefantalpalaru 12y ago

How many cores?

augustl 12y ago
This is all I could find: > At the SoC level, APM plans to integrate many of these CPU cores onto a single package. The range is officially 2 - 128 cores, although I expect we'll see something more reasonable than the extremes. Feom http://www.anandtech.com/show/5098/applied-micros-xgene-the-first-armv8-soc http://www.anandtech.com/show/5098/applied-micros-xgene-the-...

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Interesting, I kind of expected AMD to be first out the gate with one. From : http://www.zdnet.com/applied-micro-canonical-claim-the-first-arm-64-bit-server-production-software-deployment-7000029958/ http://www.zdnet.com/applied-micro-canonical-claim-the-first... "The X-Gene is an ARMv8 64-bit Server-on-a-Chip package running at up to 2.4GHz. It combines 10/40 Gigabit mixed signal I/O with what AMCC calls an enterprise-class memory subsystem. Compared to x86 architectures, AMCC claims that it delivers four-times the processor density while using less than 50 percent of the power and delivering comparable-to-better overall performance." The picture shows multiple cores, but not how many. What struck me though is that they are pitching "density and less power", presumably they mean you can put twice as many of these servers in the same power foot print that you currently put x86 machines and get 8x (4x * 2) the computing power. In case you are wondering, that is a 'super computer' pitch, it tickles the pain points of these arrays of super computers, but sadly it does not hit the 'web services' pain points. I'd love it if they said, 1TB of ECC protected RAM, dual 10G ethernet, and 32 full speed independent 6GB SATA channels on each server unit. That would help me make a more responsive web infrastructure.

dragontamer 12y ago
AMD can't be the "first one out the gate" when the The Boston Virdis by Calexdia came out years ago. http://www.boston.co.uk/solutions/viridis/default.aspx http://www.boston.co.uk/solutions/viridis/default.aspx AMD however, with its partnership with SeaMicro, is going to be a force to be reckoned with. AMD has experience in the datacenter, while all these other ARM companies don't.
- trsohmers 12y ago
  But that was 32 bit ARMv7 Cortex A9 based, shipped in 2013 with 2011/2012 specs, and twice as much than a comparable Intel based system. And that is why Calxeda is now dead. Also: AMD doesn't just have a partnership with SeaMicro, they bought them back in 2012.
  - dragontamer 12y ago
    I know. My point is that the title of "First ARM Server" has already been taken. And frankly, "First" is a dubious advantage. For ARM systems to be competitive, they must deliver power, performance, and cost-efficiency beyond Intel Xeons (including the new Intel Atom line of Xeons). Otherwise, x86 dominance in the datacenter will continue. These ARM servers are interesting and all... but honestly, a Dell Poweredge seems to deliver much more at a lower cost. Brand-new Poweredge Racks are as low as $700 (R220), Poweredge Xeons start at $1000. So what is a fair price for an X-Gene? If its anything more than $400, I'm thinking the old Intel solution will be superior. (Even a Celeron will outperform an ARM)
sliverstorm 12y ago
AMD is on the way: http://techreport.com/news/26419/amd-demos-seattle-its-first-arm-based-server-chip http://techreport.com/news/26419/amd-demos-seattle-its-first... From the sound of things the X-Gene will be available for general retail sooner, but they are both coming soon.
justizin 12y ago
That's not necessarily true, you don't need 10G ethernet to most nodes in practice, and you don't typically need dual unless you are trying to run active/passive. smaller footprint nodes like this often are, themselves, the failure unit. most workloads don't need much storage except on the DB end, app servers and esp things like memcache already are run on large non-x86 tiers. Facebook, notably, uses Tilera machines for memcache last I heard. A TB of RAM, sure, but it's a bit greedy to say nothing less than that is of much use, when 128GB of RAM in a single machine is a relatively recent advancement. Also note: these are development kits. This is presumably to begin targeting ARM, make sure your code runs reliably. Anything you can do with a TB of RAM and 32 full speed SATA channels you can develop on 4GB of RAM with one drive, as Every_Linux_Box_Ever has proven.

Gracana 12y ago

Well that's far too much money for me to spend, but I am excited to see it. Can anyone comment on whether or not ARMv8 is beneficial in embedded environments with limited memory? Will we eventually see self-contained ARMv8 microcontrollers?

wmf 12y ago
ARMv8 is generally faster than ARMv7 although it depends on the program.
justincormack 12y ago
why do you want a 64 bit microcontroller?
- Gracana 12y ago
  I don't necessarily, I'm just curious if there's anything in the architecture that would benefit applications where 64 bit addressing isn't a requirement.
  - justincormack 12y ago
    Well its a clean new design basically the first classic new RISC design for a while, but 64 bit instructions are going to take up more space generally so it is unlikely anyone will make a microcontroller - 32 bit microcontrollers are still pretty new...

rwmj 12y ago

http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/red-hat-64-bit-arm-developer-preview-jon-masterss-keynote-at-linaro-asia/#content http://rwmj.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/red-hat-64-bit-arm-deve... Jon Masters' keynote at Linaro Asia earlier this year. Jon is heading Red Hat's efforts on aarch64. In brief he wants: - upstream kernels only, single kernel boots on all manufacturers' hardware (no kernel zoo like on ARM 32 bit) - UEFI + ACPI (no device tree nonsense)

Nexxxeh 12y ago

How much is (was) it? When I visit the site, it asks me to register before I can get any further.

sn 12y ago

We made a (failed) play to get our hands on an AMD opteron devkit in order to talk about running xen on it. I did some research regarding arm64 + xen and put some notes up here http://blog.prgmr.com/xenophobia/2014/05/survey-of-xen-and-arm-servers.html http://blog.prgmr.com/xenophobia/2014/05/survey-of-xen-and-a... in case anyone is interested.