SeaMicro: Intel proxy shows server moxie SeaMicro last week announced its newest ultra-dense, ultra-low power Atom-based server solution. Our pal TPM gives it full coverage in this Reg article, but here’s the basic story. SeaMicro's first system, the SM10000, crammed eight Atom single-core processors and 16GB of memory onto a 5” x 11” system board and combined 64 of …
"SeaMicro is Intel’s weapon of choice to blunt the ARM processor’s move into servers"
What ARM doesn't do that this box does do is 64bit addressing. Currently a bit of a niche market (albeit an increasingly important niche).
ARM has plenty of potential as a general purpose Linux-based (and Windows 8-based, if anybody cares) desktop and datacentre engine. And more.
SeaMicro has potential as... souped up HPC bladeserver compute engine with lots of memory? (Do basic webservers really need >2GB of memory these days, or do they just need high speed file access?)
"Back in Alpha’s day, DEC had to fab its own chips, and per-chip production costs were very high."
Which is why DEC had at least two Alpha architecture licensees who were licenced to design+build their own chips (on the basis that they would sell chips in volume, at lower prices). Samsung actually did so, for a while.
...sure Linux was ported to Alpha, but it was, at least in my opinion, too little too late. Alpha was over as a Unix competitor in the late 90's. They just didn't get enough traction with ISVs and even though the systems offered amazing performance, customers couldn't get the range of apps they needed. Microsoft did deliver on Alpha, but only after a lot of delays. In my mind, it was the lack of an ecosystem that killed Alpha, rather than technical considerations.
In a manner of speaking they did. But not in the manner which DEC management had been led to expect. DEC got an OS, pieces of a compiler, and not much else. Certainly very little commitment.
In a few niche markets (such as high end pre-press Postscript rendering and the like), the performance of Alpha outweighed the lack of general apps, for a little while. But then x86s got faster and although Alpha got faster too, Microsoft pulled the plug on NT/Alpha and the rest is history. As is Alpha. IA64 of course has become the industry standard 64bit architecture, just like HP and Intel said it would. Hasn't it.
Linux was indeed quickly ported to Alpha, and it's where I got my intro to the world of free/open source software. Thanks to David M-T, Dave R, and others who made it all work.
it seems simple enough, time to roll out those 6Quad core Freescale mx6 ARM cortex A9 chip SOC's at just over $20 a pop all day long including their profit margin , (dont think Intel can pop their Atom out at that price! for long)
http://liliputing.com/2011/01/freescale-introduces-new-single-dual-and-quad-core-chips.html
Monday, January 3rd, 2011, 1:00 am by Brad Linder
"All three new chips will begin sampling in the second quarter of 2011, and the company expects devices using the new chips to hit the market before the end of the year."
and make server (on a new mass produced style PCiE card in included driver/app web interface too )PCB for Small and medium enterprises use this year... so everyone can buy and use them, not just Co-location sites etc.
and put 16 of them of this or something like it
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/ZT-Systems-R1801e-/
Ubuntu-based ARM server runs on 80 Watts
By Eric Brown,2010-12-01
"ZT Systems announced what it says is the first commercially available ARM-based development platform for the server market. The Ubuntu Linux-based R1801e 1U rackmount server employs SSD (solid state disk) storage and eight ARM Cortex-A9-based computer-on-modules (COMs), providing 16 600MHz cores while using less than 80 Watts, the company says."
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/Freescale-iMX-6
““The i.MX 6 series is Freescale’s first ARM-based multicore SoC and first Cortex-A9 model. The processor advances the i.MX family with dual-stream 1080p video playback at 60 frames per second (fps), 3D video playback at 50Mbps, desktop-quality gaming, augmented reality applications, and novel content creation capabilities, says Freescale.
The SoC is also touted for being one of the first applications processors to offer hardware support for the open source VP8 codec.
....
the SoC is claimed to enable 1080p video (single stream) with only 350mW consumption. "
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