Baserock Slab Server Pairs High-Density ARM Chips With Linux 51
Nerval's Lobster writes with a report at Slash Datacenter that a portion of the predicted low-power-ARM-servers future has arrived, in the form of Codethink's Baserock Slab ARM Server, which puts 32 cores into a half-depth 1U server. "As with other servers built on ARM architecture, Codethink intends the Baserock Slab for data centers in need of extra power efficiency. The Slab supports Baserock Linux, currently in its second development release (known as 'Secret Volcano'), as well as Debian GNU/Linux. While Baserock Linux was first developed around the X86-64 platform, its developers planned the leap to the ARM platform. Each Slab CPU node consists of a Marvell quad-core 1.33-GHz Armada XP ARM chip, 2 GB of ECC RAM, a Cogent Computer Systems CSB1726 SoM, and a 30 GB solid-state drive. The nodes are connected to the high-speed network fabric, which includes two links per compute node driving 5 Gbits/s of bonded bandwidth to each CPU, with wire-speed switching and routing at up to 119 million packets per second."
Re:As usual the key information is missing (Score:4, Interesting)
Total data centre power consumption is a major problem. We have the space in the racks for more servers, but no more power. In that case getting (example figures) 50% of the CPU power at 25% of the power consumption is totally worth it.
The problem for these ARM servers is whether a 64-core cluster in 150W beats a quad-core low-power x86 server in 150W. "Beating" in this situation means either performance, cost or both.
Re:As usual the key information is missing (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:My bleeding eyes... (Score:4, Interesting)
actually, got that completely wrong - its a cold chimney, cables and the PSU output is outward-facing. See the video on their site [baserock.com]