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I'm hoping that these will shortly a) exist and b) be produced in enough volume that they unit cost will come down to <$100 levels. I'd like to buy a small, low
by skorgu 17y ago
I'm hoping that these will shortly a) exist and b) be produced in enough volume that they unit cost will come down to <$100 levels. I'd like to buy a small, low-power cluster for hobbyist use but the current low-water mark is about $200 plus memory (which is limited to 2G). Hopefully there would be some standard on DC-DC distribution but that would just be gravy.
- wmf 17y agoI doubt they'll be that micro; the optimal point looks closer to $500. Also, the minimum order tends to be a full rack. You should look at mini-ITX boards.
- jasonlbaptiste 17y ago<$500 is totally doable. I'd ballpark retail for $350-$400 with an eventual volume price point of $300. Specs looking something like: Dual core atom processor 2 GB Ram (expandable to 4gb) Solid state disk for OS Mini itx form factor
- skorgu 17y agoThat's pretty close to doable today: Supermicro 1U 230 barebones chassis is $200 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101263&cm_re=atom_supermicro-_-16-101-263-_-Product http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101... $50 for ram and <$100 on storage for a HDD or $200 for a small SSD. Bulk prices would take that down by probably 10-20% today so you could probably do this for $300 today. I believe Dell is selling systems like this as private integrations just not retail, I'd imagine their costs are substantially lower. Bump the CPU to a 330 or whatever, bump the ram sure but you're still talking $300 when a normal 1U HP server is <$1k list and is vastly more bang for buck. The cooling and power density arguments aren't going to be very persuasive (IMO) unless the price is there as well, hence my hope for very low per-unit costs, even if there are chassis/bladecenter components as part of the package.