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Atom Processors Set New Record For Power-Efficient Sorting
schliz writes "German researchers have set a new record for energy efficient data sorting with a system based on netbook processors and Solid State Disks. The system, dubbed EcoSort, more than tripled the power efficiency of former record holders, leading one of its developers to claim: 'In the long run, many small, power-efficient and cooperating systems are going to replace the so far used, heavy weighted ones.' Records were defined by 'Sort Benchmark,' which was created by missing Microsoft scientist Jim Gray and was now managed by representatives of companies like Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft."
As electricity and cooling bills get ever higher being more frugal with the power will count more and more on the bottom line. Congrats to the team on a new record!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Good to see that Jim's work lives on...meanwhile, this is about all you get in the article:
"EcoSort set records in the Joule category, which measured the amount of energy required to sort either 10GB, 100GB or 1TB of records.
It reached a maximum efficiency of 36,400 records sorted per joule for 100GB of data, using an Intel Atom 330 processor, 4GB of RAM, and four 256GB SSDs by flash vendor Super Talent Technology.
In 2009, a team from the University of Melbourne had the 100GB record of 11,600 records sorted per joule using the OzSort system, which comprised a 2.6GHz AMD processor, 4GB of RAM, seven 160GB 7200 RPM SATA hard disks and a Linux operating System."
Sure, this is the way things are going, but until prices come down we won't be seeing SSDs replacing HDDs; work fine for the desktop, tho'
no no no — you're supposed to say “Can you imagine...”
Ceci n'est pas une
The Via C7/Nano seems to be a great chip for a home/small office server, what with its built-in AES encryption making it faster than even a high end Xeon without hardware acceleration. My current setup consists of 2*WD SE16 hard drives, APC UPS, 80+ Corsair PSU, PC2500e Nano mobo with 1GB, and a couple of 80mm case fans, together running under 50W idle, and only 7W more at full CPU load. If I were to replace the Corsair with a fanless PSU good up to 80-120W I might get an extra 5-10% efficiency; I could wipe out the case fans probably with no problem (2-3W, say), especially if I replaced hard with spinning solid state storage, and that of course would shave off around 15W. Substitute a large fanless heatsink for another W (or just get a fanless motherboard/CPU in the first place). But even as-is, it's a good improvement on my previous regular desktop CPU-based setup.
For something which is on 24 hours a day, going several months between reboots and stressed only in the IO and encryption departments, I see no reason to use a full-power desktop processor. So, what problems have you guys encountered which has meant you haven't ended up with this option?
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Here here!
If any one attempted this test with a Arm Cortex 9A with the full 4 cores, this would be blown out of the water easily.
RES PUBLICA NON DOMINETUR
It's easy for some marketing fools to say, "Oh, for sure, it'll last 5 to 10 years." It's easy for them to print those claims on the product packaging, too. But marketing claims don't, of course, have any real impact on the lifespan of a product.
We heard the same claims for CD-Rs years back. They'd last 99 years, we'd often hear. Now, less than 10 years later, people who backed up data onto CD-Rs are running into problems. Even when storing the burned CD-Rs properly, they have nevertheless developed unrecoverable read errors because they've degraded many times faster than expected.
Frankly, we can't say that these SSD drives will last 5-10 years straight, while saturated, especially while they really haven't been around for that long. Unless you've actually taken a drive and had it perform writes continuously for a decade, and can demonstratively provide that the drives will last that long before performance degrades, we have to assume the worst.
They measure the power at the wall and not on the CPU specifically, so there's no 'fraud' going on. Putting processing elements on the north bridge does nothing to gain this system an advantage. Reading the contest rules, they recommend power meters like this: http://www.brandelectronics.com/meters.html
True, though the space used by an ITX is smaller then those for your typical blade.
You can get about 2-3 in per u.
I also think you have to calculate the power needed. Some of the systems I have seen are designed for the worst-case, yet that hardly ever happens. But the system has to have all the bling and whatnot.
Or, if you need the power, the system has been nerfed because each node costs so much.
Also not to dismiss is the cooling requirements.
I have seen nodes you could use to keep your coffee/tea warm (on the outside!).
Naturally moving the datacenters around will benefit you to a certain degree. But those are often just short term solutions. Like any other 'outsourcing' they often depend on lower wages and/or subsidies which, once they are depleted, forces the datacenter to move.
But I agree with you, we need more data and experience.
If you have low CPU needs why not virtualize? You can fit one heck of a lot of ITX sized VM's on a blade chassis full of modern equipment. If fact it would be on the order of 1500 in a 10U C7000 using 8GB dimm's if your VM's were 1GB and you had no memory overcommit. One c7000 is going to be a heck of a lot more power efficient than 1500 ITX boards, cheaper and more reliable besides.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.