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Small Form SMP Boxen and Laptops - Where Are They?
3ryon asks: "I've been charged with procuring a high-end portable server containing two 1Ghz CPU's, 30 Gig of hard drive, and 1 Gig of RAM, all under $20,000. Ideally this would exist in a laptop footprint. Does this exist anywhere? My current idea is to buy a 1U server from Dell and a 1U LCD/Keyboard module and have a machine shop build an enclosure for them. Besides my need (a portable video encoder), I bet that sales people would love to be able to bring this sort of power to a client site." Even though computing technology has grown much smaller thru the years, I'm not quite sure SMP laptops are a possiblilty yet. A major concern of putting so much computing power in such a small space is twofold: heat and the electrical power needed to run it. I'm not quite sure that the manufacturers have found a way around that, yet. Is it possible to get SMP power in a smaller footprint than your typical desktop, however?
While it's surely possible to get the components into an enclosure smaller than an average mini-tower case, would you really want to? You need air space to cool those processors. You also need a fairly hefty power supply, which is also going to get pretty warm...
Wow...a chance I could be first for once...;P
Tadpole is sort of what you are looking for. They make UltraSparc and HP PA-RISC based laptops. It doesn't look like they make Dual systems, but their stuff is definately worth drooling over.
On the other hand, I wonder how hard it would be to design a Dual PowerPC laptop, of either Apple or IBM workstation variety, since those chips run real cool.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Check the Good Ole "LunchBox" form factor! For those unfamiliar, they are basically just a small atx case that accepts standard atx mobo/peripherals and has an LCD display and keyboard that fold up to become part of the "case". It ends up being about the size of a briefcase thats double thick. Portable desktop power.
.sig wanted: Must be concise, funny, and display my cleverness.
Search on google for 'portable rackmount' or 'industrial PC' -- there are tons of places selling these things.
Obviously, you are aware that once you purchase one of these you are locked into that motherboard and processor combination. You will eventually not see much in the way of return on investment, personally if I needed high performance gear in a small footprint - I would buy a custom 1U case and put an AMD Athlon/Thunderbird in it and switch to the dual motherboards when they are available.
Once you find your perfect server, do not overlook heating and power requirements for your system. Heat is a huge problem, especially with AMD hardware. Look for the Orb fan products for use with AMD's processors, they are my favorite and increase system stability.
-Pat
In the future, please refrain from making comments that completely answer a submission, rather, enhance the topic by adding thought provoking thoughts, such as...
"What might one do with a Beowulf cluster of such SMP laptops?"
...or inflammetory thoughts...
"Finally, laptops might have enough processing power handle Mozilla!"
...or a comment that brings other market segments into the disscussion...
"I'll bet that OS X would run lightning fast on such a laptop and how many simultaneous Napster downloaded MP3s could you play on such a laptop?"
Just don't mention realistic facts that would make such a system unfeasable! By the way, this comment is mostly just a joke. ;-)
Keeping
There are some microATX dual processor motherboards around, so you might start there.
However, you haven't mentioned what your tilter is here. You can't possibily have performance and size the same, just as you can't have cost and performance the same. Larger servers will most always perform better than smaller ones, because in this case size isn't too big of a consideration. Consumer PCs can get away with their mid-tower size by sacrificing a good motherboard and power supply. Laptops take this to a whole new level, but some of the solutions are getting more and more impressive. Still though, I don't think there will ever be a time when a full size server will be the same size or slower than, something, say, the size of a laptop. True, processor feature sizes shrink, but transistor counts similarly rise, almost linearly. This is why processor sizes have largely remained the same -- even grown a little bit. This, despite a feature size jump from 1 micron down to 180 nanometers.
Ultimatly, if you're that pressed for space, you could try jerry-rigging a dual GHz system inside something the size of a 700 MHz laptop, but don't expect your hardware to like you. A GHz system is worth much if you're constantly getting BSODs and lockups...
You could always wait a few years when people are trying to cram 5 GHz systems into small enclousers, then a dual 1 GHz system will be no problem. Can anyone say DIMM-PC?
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I found this one which seems pretty representative. Note that there is a picture of it with dual pentium II's. You may have to shop around for a system with a beefy enough power supply to cover the load from the system (this one comes with a 250w PS which probably isn't enough).
I wouldn't seriously consider porting arounnd a 1U system with a rack lcd & keyboard. Those things are pretty damn unweildy even in the server room. These lunch boxes should move around pretty well.
If you get to Hardocp.com they should have a few links to case-modding pages and other relavant info.
Anyway, as a guy who appreciates even case-hacking, I hope you go with something cool. There's nothing quite like having a unique-looking box to show off.