Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Atom Processors Set New Record For Power-Efficient Sorting

Posted by timothy on from the one-electron-at-a-time dept.

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."

11 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. This is the way we are headed by hairyfeet · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:This is the way we are headed by White+Flame · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Short answer: No.

      Long answer: They sort of used to be, but nowadays the lifecycles and capacities are large enough such that you could keep the SSD's interface saturated with writes for 5-10 years straight before you start to encroach on their conservatively rated write cycle life expectancy.

  2. Not much in the article by Bearhouse · · Score: 4, Informative

    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'

  3. why is the Via C7 not more popular? by FuckingNickName · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:why is the Via C7 not more popular? by SpzToid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What are you using AES encryption for, hard disk encryption? If so, this is a little unusual for a server, which are normally found in secure facilities, but make sense for a home perhaps.

      I'm thinking a home NAS isn't something one would want a common house-thief to walk away with. But TFA article talks about sorting, and not NAS work, hence my request for clarity. I'm curious what your application, and OS is. Your setup is certainly interesting.

      --
      You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
    2. Re:why is the Via C7 not more popular? by FuckingNickName · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes. The bottleneck for ssh probably becomes the HMAC - this thread is enlightening. SHA HMAC is afaict considered difficult to accelerate with Via's implementation, though a patch may exist. With a stock (AES-accelerated) build, software MD5 is quicker.

    3. Re:why is the Via C7 not more popular? by FuckingNickName · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sorry - although I mentioned that the Via's great for a home/office encrypted NAS, I perhaps wasn't clear that this is precisely the application I was talking about. I was just expanding the discussion on power-efficient CPU applications, and implying that, when considering energy efficiency, a low power CPU with dedicated circuitry for popular complex operations might be the way forward.

    4. Re:why is the Via C7 not more popular? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Am I the only one who read this and thought that 50W idle is insanely high? For comparison, the BeagleBoard draws under 50mW idle. If the hard disks have spun down, that should be about your total power drain. Maybe 1W if you add a very inefficient PSU. Consuming 50W while doing nothing? That's not low power, that's embarrassing.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    5. Re:why is the Via C7 not more popular? by FuckingNickName · · Score: 5, Informative

      Erm, no, for developers there have been Linux kernel crypto modules supporting the Via Padlock included since 2.6.11, and if you don't want them, you can always use the crypto instructions directly. The Java is just an API option provided by Via.

  4. How are you sure they'll last that long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. System power is what they measure by Xocet_00 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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