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Creating a Low-Power Cloud With Netbook Chips
Al writes "Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have created a remarkably low-power server architecture using netbook processors and flash memory cards. The server design, dubbed a 'fast array of wimpy nodes,' or FAWN, is only designed to perform simple tasks, but the CMU team say it could be perfect for large Web companies that have to retrieve large amounts of data from RAM. A set-up including 21 individual nodes draws a maximum of just 85 watts under real-world conditions. The researchers say that a FAWN cluster could offer a low-power replacement for sites that currently rely on Memcached to access data from RAM."
Hey, let's do it because we can! Maybe, with all of our netbook nodes, we can get a web page to load in 10 seconds instead of over 100!
While we're at it, let's make a Beowilf cluster of iPods!
Didn't we have another term for this before all this cloud hype?
Imagine a beo... Beef? Bud?
I can't remember. My brain can't fight all these buzzwords.
imagine a beo..... oh forget it
I tried but I couldn't resist. I reloaded three times and i was still first post
When I started this post, I was thinking that the overall power usage of building 21 computers that run at 85 W might supersede the power usage of building one 1000 W computer with 32 GB of memory, if you take the whole process from manufacturing to disposal.
But I suppose it's the electric bill of the company we're concerned with so I'll just sit in the corner and re-read Bambi.
This is the next generation of a Beowulf cluster using the next-generation of hardware which is cooler, cheaper CPUs and solid-state storage and memory. Someone was bound to come up with this idea because it only makes sense. It is good to know that we have a proof of concept now so someone else can take the idea and modify it to come up with something even better. Eventually hardware manufacturers will take notice and release it as COTS hardware. For companies who want cooler and cheaper server hardware this would be a good fit once it has been packaged as a COTS product.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Weird choice. I suggested a while ago using a set of OMAP3 chips in blade servers. You can get a 600MHz ARM CPU, 512MB of flash and 256MB of RAM in a single package-on-package module, with a power usage of under 1W. Put an 8x8 grid of them on a board and you've got a nice little wedge of server power at well under 64W. Use a bit SAN elsewhere in the rack and you've got a set of machines you can bring online easily for individual users. You could assign individual ones to different users / customers and just plug in more when they were needed. If I were doing it now, I'd be tempted to use one of the newer Freescale ARM designs that goes to around 1GHz and has on-die Ethernet controllers.
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So I guess the word cloud has replaced cluster to give old technology a fresh new look. Gotta love marketing.
And since when did the term netbook come to describe low power computing hardware? There have been mini-ITX boards with low power CPU's long before the term netbook was in use. Just more marketing bullshit, repackage existing tech with a shiny new name and sell it.
A Beowulf Cluster of those!!!
Really, how is a cloud different from a modernized cluster? Or is cloud newspeak for cluster?
Or to put it simply: pulling a "finished" object from memcached will almost always be faster then having a machine create/render/whatever you do to create the object. If you want to pull large amounts of data from RAM buy a 1U server that takes 64 gigabytes of ram for $5000 (so about $78 per gig of ram, and much faster than a compact flash card in a super cheap laptop). Or buy solid state disks/PCIe RAM cards. Now if we're talking about building a render farm for whatever (frames, objects in database, etc.) simply run the numbers, how many objects/sec/dollar do you get with different solutions and how important is latency.
What interests me is the ease of building a many node cluster and learning how to administer and write software for something with 20+ nodes.
Of course you could just buy computer time from amazon.com EC2 for $0.10 per hour per node and practice there ($2 an hour for 20 systems running. not bad).
256M per node times 21 nodes equals 5GB. 84 watts is nice, but I just built a home server with 4GB of RAM and 2 1TB drives that has a low power AMD chipset in it. At idle, it's about 70 watts, and gets to about 100 watts when under load. Replacing the two 1TB drives with an 80GB SSD would probably be closer to what if represented with FAWN.
Figuring $100 for the motherboard and parts makes that total system cost $2100. My server was about $500.
Don't get me wrong, this is an interesting idea. Using an Atom can get you a lot more performance for not much more power use, and you can go up to at least 2GB RAM per node. But there's a limit to how small you can make a single item in a cluster before you're duplicating effort without much benefit.
I've been toying around with a Samsung 16GB SSD. Performance improvement over spinning disks in an I/O-heavy scenario was neglegible. Also, it seemed as if the Linux kernel was still using memory to buffer SSD disk I/O. Which somewhat negates the argument of using SSDs to free main memory for other stuff.
Any idea what type of OS/filesystem combination they were using?
Obviously it can perform fast, but it isn't going to last too long. Maybe flash is cheap enough that its limited read/write cycles aren't a serious issue, but this thing is going to chew up flash like no one's business.
I do like that my school's eldest beowulf cluster is now completely obsolete though, costing as much power as a few space heaters and processing as much data as a cluster of iPhones.
2 buzzwords in 1 title, can we do better ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Intel X25-E, 2.6 watts, 3300 Write IOPS, 35000 read IOPS*. So only one or two orders of magnitude more efficient...
And though no prices are given in the article for the FAWN, at $800 for the X25-E it's probably less expensive too. Particularly if you include setup and administration costs.
Not a bad idea in general, and not a bad idea in specific for 5 years ago, but pathetically outclassed in every area by a high end modern SSD.
* http://download.intel.com/design/flash/nand/extreme/extreme-sata-ssd-datasheet.pdf
Building a better backup.
Zettabyte Storage
I recently had my cat push a laptop off a desk, and break just the screen. I hooked it up to a crt, installed Gentoo, and now use it as a personal server. It's quieter, and uses less electricity. It has been a great solution for me, and wonder how many others could benefit from this thinking. But this article is sort of taking my idea a few steps further. It could work well.
> "You saved Slashdot from this"
You just put it on Slashdot. Thanks for ruining my night, nerd!
Come on, now
This argument is misinformed.
Businesses are in business to make money and put food on the table. Nobody does anything for free. If I build a widget and it costs me $10 in electricity, $5 in heating, and $3 in cooling, my widget is going to be $18 more expensive as a result. Now, I don't do things for free, so I'll just add $18 to the cost of my widget. Probably $20 because I want some more markup for my trouble.
Energy costs are always included in anything you buy. If the initial+electrical cost of buying Widget Z instead of Widget Y is better, then it is probably less energy intensive if you consider the whole system.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Second, the intention of SSDs were never to "offload RAM". The idea is to use SSD as a pre-buffer for RAM, so it's quicker to access than reading from disk.
Well, eXecute In Place was designed to allow SSD to be accessed directly by the CPU. I understand that XIP can improve startup times, as we do not need to move the data from flash to ram to CPU, but we instead move it directly to CPU. SSD tends to be slower than memory, but the CPU cache may offset this. See for example:
http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0409.1/0510.html
I'll note XIP is mostly used for embedded devices. So for PCs you are essentially correct when you say that SSD are just fast storage.
http://gizmodo.com/5091473/sgi-molecule-packs-10000-atom-cores-one-ton-of-awesomeness