I am... excited. Sadly, three grand is a lot of money for prgmr.com right now, so I'll have to consider carefully if I want to wait for production or if I want to buy a dev kit and start experimenting ahead of time, but ARM servers are something we have been talking about selling for a while.
Even if their performance per watt turns out to be not as great as expected, there is a fair bit of interest in the architecture, as far as I can tell.
These things look beefy enough that I might even be able to virtualize and sell Xen VMs. There is some dev work involved with that, but srn has expressed interest, so maybe .
Finally, an ARM platform with ECC support. Well, and reasonable performance networking one presumes. And PCI-Express!
I think ARM has a lot of potential in the "smartphone priced" server market, particularly in an age where physical isolation (vs VMs or containers) and legal ownership of the server might theoretically provide some advantages against state surveillance. At least post-facto in the sense of "one could conceivably build a lawsuit on this" vs. "now I need DigitalOcean/Amazon/Google to sue the govt for me."
No. The Red Hat announcement is a variant of RHEL. However you can just run Fedora 21 on ARM64 -- I'm running it on my dev machine (which is not AMD, but X-Gene based).
It's a footnote to the larger thing, but it mentions "compression and crypto co-processors". I'm familiar with hardware crypto acceleration, but I'm sort of curious about the compression part--is it gzip or one of the fast algos like Snappy/LZO/LZ4 or something proprietary? How fast?
Besides compressing network traffic, hardware compression could be interesting for applications like zram--somewhat expands what you can store in RAM with (perhaps surprisingly?) less random page-read latency than even an SSD.
Interesting, except this is "head to head" with AMD. It is part of the reason Intel has been making massive investments across their portfolio to fend off ARM incursions.
AMD showed with the original AMD64 architecture that they could "out compete" Intel, it was fascinating at the time to see Enterprise level folks having to choose AMD over Intel because Intel was insisting that if you wanted 64 bits you went with Itanium. But it also showed how futile it is to try to compete with them using an ISA and eco-system where they have all the advantages. Chip sets and front side busses and a million other ways that Intel keeps a lock on their bread and butter.
ARM from AMD, means that to compete with them Intel either has to cut margins on their server chips to ARM levels, or make x86-64 server chips competitive. For a lot of places CPUs per cubic foot of rack space is an important number as the cost per month of a rack in a Colo (can be) fixed, the more stuff you can run in it while running at 80% power the lower your monthly cost per instance, and higher profit per instance. Getting a penny per core extra per hour per day can be a huge difference.
So this is an opening salvo in the next battle. I am predicting it will be just as interesting as the time AMD showed the world you could do 64 bits in a 'commodity' processor.
It's not that they can't/won't compete (actually, when it comes to large scale virtualization, a 16 or 32 core Opteron is much more preferable over an 4 core or 8 core Xeon, and it's less expensive sometimes too).
AMD is seeing the writing on the wall -- ARM is coming into the server market in a big way. It's way better power consumption to performance ratio. You can pack a lot more cores into a server and still consume less power, and at scale, they can compete with traditional dual CPU x86 machines. They are also cheaper to manufacture and purchase.
A great many server companies are getting into ARM -- most notably HP. AMD has said this is a move for the 2016 market (at the earliest). I think it's the right move and welcome it.
Assuming these chips come in TCO competitive for a decent proportion of workloads (and in theory they should be clearly better for enough) Intel will have to respond either with new technology, which they either have on a back burner or isn't there, or cutting costs, which will destroy their margins and R&D capacity.
It's very hard to see how Intel can maintain their position here at all. Once that spiral starts they're stuffed, and normally the only outcome of such situations is to belatedly combine the competing product with your historic strength, so it seems inevitable Intel will be making ARM chips before too long, again.
It's impossible to really compete head-on. It's ridiculously expensive and even if your processors are better people will still buy Intel because of brand and relationships. AMD wants to swim in a pond which doesn't have Intel in it, and I don't blame them.
Seems like a bad idea to price your dev kit this high. If I were in AMD's position, I'd heavily subsidize the dev kits -- maybe $500-1000 -- to try to get people to build on my platform.
At $3k, it's only going to be appealing to hardware OEMs or big teams. At $500, random people within companies would buy them (i.e. me), or people might get them for personal projects.
The idea of something with working TrustZones (vs. the abortion which is TCG/TPM) is intriguing, on top of ARM power savings.
These surely aren't ramped up on a full production line, more likely being made in prototype houses that can't handle the volume, and have extensive testing of each unit.
You need to get the OEMs and big teams on board first, and can get the developer-centric experimental products out later.
"The whole thing has an expected power usage of 25W." - from an Ars article from Jan this year.
On the desktop front, the recent Kaveri A10s (low cost quad core CPUs with built-in Radeon R7 graphics) coupled with 2.4Ghz memory gives very playable frame rates for almost all the big releases.
ARM Opteron development kits are targeted at server- notice the Opteron moniker- which means RedHat is a natural partner, and Fedora is RedHat's testing OS.
(Why not an old stable OS? Because ARM64 is brand-new)
Erm... a good Xeon Dell with Dual 10GBe extension is $2000... and the Xeon can scale up basically indefinitely.
Don't believe me? Go configure a Dell R220 Poweredge with Dual-10GBe ports. Its only $2,021.37.
Hopefully, the real hardware will be significantly cheaper. AMD has an issue competing against itself (ie: Opteron 4360), let alone against Intel if these are the prices they're looking for.
[+] [-] lsc|11 years ago|reply
Even if their performance per watt turns out to be not as great as expected, there is a fair bit of interest in the architecture, as far as I can tell.
These things look beefy enough that I might even be able to virtualize and sell Xen VMs. There is some dev work involved with that, but srn has expressed interest, so maybe .
[+] [-] dragontamer|11 years ago|reply
Why Xen VMs? Isn't the Xen technology basically unproven in ARM space? I'd imagine that KVM/ARM would be the best bet.
[+] [-] penglish1|11 years ago|reply
I think ARM has a lot of potential in the "smartphone priced" server market, particularly in an age where physical isolation (vs VMs or containers) and legal ownership of the server might theoretically provide some advantages against state surveillance. At least post-facto in the sense of "one could conceivably build a lawsuit on this" vs. "now I need DigitalOcean/Amazon/Google to sue the govt for me."
[+] [-] stephencanon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mark3mark|11 years ago|reply
http://www.redhat.com/about/news/press-archive/2014/7/red-ha...
[+] [-] rwmj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twotwotwo|11 years ago|reply
Besides compressing network traffic, hardware compression could be interesting for applications like zram--somewhat expands what you can store in RAM with (perhaps surprisingly?) less random page-read latency than even an SSD.
[+] [-] wmf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsync|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragontamer|11 years ago|reply
Maybe for like... $1000... AMD would have a solid offering. But $3000 for this? Really?
[+] [-] SoapSeller|11 years ago|reply
I'm really hoping that someone will compete with Intel on the high-end CPUs, maybe IBM's PowerPC?
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|11 years ago|reply
AMD showed with the original AMD64 architecture that they could "out compete" Intel, it was fascinating at the time to see Enterprise level folks having to choose AMD over Intel because Intel was insisting that if you wanted 64 bits you went with Itanium. But it also showed how futile it is to try to compete with them using an ISA and eco-system where they have all the advantages. Chip sets and front side busses and a million other ways that Intel keeps a lock on their bread and butter.
ARM from AMD, means that to compete with them Intel either has to cut margins on their server chips to ARM levels, or make x86-64 server chips competitive. For a lot of places CPUs per cubic foot of rack space is an important number as the cost per month of a rack in a Colo (can be) fixed, the more stuff you can run in it while running at 80% power the lower your monthly cost per instance, and higher profit per instance. Getting a penny per core extra per hour per day can be a huge difference.
So this is an opening salvo in the next battle. I am predicting it will be just as interesting as the time AMD showed the world you could do 64 bits in a 'commodity' processor.
[+] [-] Alupis|11 years ago|reply
AMD is seeing the writing on the wall -- ARM is coming into the server market in a big way. It's way better power consumption to performance ratio. You can pack a lot more cores into a server and still consume less power, and at scale, they can compete with traditional dual CPU x86 machines. They are also cheaper to manufacture and purchase.
A great many server companies are getting into ARM -- most notably HP. AMD has said this is a move for the 2016 market (at the earliest). I think it's the right move and welcome it.
[+] [-] wmf|11 years ago|reply
The Tyan Power8 server running Ubuntu is coming. We'll have to see what the performance is.
[+] [-] fidotron|11 years ago|reply
Assuming these chips come in TCO competitive for a decent proportion of workloads (and in theory they should be clearly better for enough) Intel will have to respond either with new technology, which they either have on a back burner or isn't there, or cutting costs, which will destroy their margins and R&D capacity.
It's very hard to see how Intel can maintain their position here at all. Once that spiral starts they're stuffed, and normally the only outcome of such situations is to belatedly combine the competing product with your historic strength, so it seems inevitable Intel will be making ARM chips before too long, again.
[+] [-] szatkus|11 years ago|reply
BTW, they are planning to come back into HEDT in 2016.
[+] [-] tormeh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Qantourisc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdl|11 years ago|reply
At $3k, it's only going to be appealing to hardware OEMs or big teams. At $500, random people within companies would buy them (i.e. me), or people might get them for personal projects.
The idea of something with working TrustZones (vs. the abortion which is TCG/TPM) is intriguing, on top of ARM power savings.
[+] [-] mcpherrinm|11 years ago|reply
These surely aren't ramped up on a full production line, more likely being made in prototype houses that can't handle the volume, and have extensive testing of each unit.
You need to get the OEMs and big teams on board first, and can get the developer-centric experimental products out later.
[+] [-] api|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragontamer|11 years ago|reply
Also, expect more AMD marketing gaffs. They fired a good chunk of their marketing team a year ago when they were downsizing.
AMD got good stuff coming IMO, but they are billions of $$ in debt and have been operating at a loss for a few years.
[+] [-] carlsborg|11 years ago|reply
On the desktop front, the recent Kaveri A10s (low cost quad core CPUs with built-in Radeon R7 graphics) coupled with 2.4Ghz memory gives very playable frame rates for almost all the big releases.
[+] [-] tormeh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Alupis|11 years ago|reply
And it's backed by Red Hat -- which caters to the server market first and foremost. This seems a natural fit.
[+] [-] valarauca1|11 years ago|reply
Fedora doesn't use the libre kernel like debian
Fedora is commonly the 'test bed' of things for red hat. Fedora is to Red Hat, what Sid is to Debian stable.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|11 years ago|reply
ARM Opteron development kits are targeted at server- notice the Opteron moniker- which means RedHat is a natural partner, and Fedora is RedHat's testing OS.
(Why not an old stable OS? Because ARM64 is brand-new)
[+] [-] dragontamer|11 years ago|reply
Erm... a good Xeon Dell with Dual 10GBe extension is $2000... and the Xeon can scale up basically indefinitely.
Don't believe me? Go configure a Dell R220 Poweredge with Dual-10GBe ports. Its only $2,021.37.
Hopefully, the real hardware will be significantly cheaper. AMD has an issue competing against itself (ie: Opteron 4360), let alone against Intel if these are the prices they're looking for.
[+] [-] dman|11 years ago|reply