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HP Announces ARM-Based Server Line
sammcj writes with news that HP is developing servers based on 32-bit ARM processors from Calxeda. Their current model is only a test setup, but they plan to roll out a finalized design by the middle of next year.
"HP's server design packs 288 Calxeda chips into a 4U rack-mount server, or 2,800 in a full rack, with a shared power, cooling, and management infrastructure. By eliminating much of the cabling and switching devices used in traditional servers and using the low-power ARM processors, HP says it can reduce both power and space requirements dramatically. The Redstone platform uses a 4U (7-inch) rack-mount server chassis. Inside, HP has put 72 small server boards, each with four Calxeda processors, 4GB of RAM and 4MB of L2 cache. Each processor, based on the ARM Cortex-A9 design, runs at 1.4GHz and has its own 80 gigabit cross-bar switch built into the chip"
It's still amazing how well x86 + Windows works, taking in account all the hacks and legacy cruft involved.
The legacy cruft is often microcoded out and runs rather slowly. The modern x64 isn't too bad.
However, it's delightful to finally see ARM being more and more utilized outside the smartphone category, in PCs.
Not just ARM. Both SPARC and MIPS (compatible but independent) have now made showings in the top 10 supercomputers.
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With the world moving to 64 bits to accomodate huge databases in memory and on disk they must be aiming for low hanging fruit here. Still, I'd like to get hold of one IF they ever convert it into a desktop version - would be nice to have a linux installation at home that doesn't pay homage to wintel in any way.
This type of setup is already used in Most DSLAMs. Full rack, 2PSU, cooliing, 24 or 48 port (x)DSL cards with ARM CPU as independent servers, Internal management card and network switch. Think of blade server racks.
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As others have said PA-RISC has been discontinued for some time, so that is one reason. The other is I am pretty certain this thing is targeted at the Linux and [A-z]*.?BSD ecosystem, which has pretty strong support for ARM these days. The software stack for PA-RISC is just not there unless you want to run HPUX and the market for new HPUX deployments is probably quite small.
80GBps switch or not you not probably running your database on these things, but they sound like a perfect web farm in box solution. The software stack on the Linux and [A-z]*.?BSD is entirely there for that and is largely familiar to existing admins. Apache on Linux is still Apache on Linux even when ARCH=arm5tel
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HP's balance sheet is up and down like a whore's drawers - one quarter they make a stonking loss, the next they're making solid profits. They haven't been consistent in years.
Their core businesses are being eaten away by ever-tougher competition; the days when you could confidently recommend an HP inkjet are long gone (have you seen their software suite lately? Multi-function devices are even worse because with them you often can't install just the bare driver and have it work); I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happens to their laser printer division sooner rather than later.
Were I to hazard a guess - and I'm not a fortune 500 CEO (if I was I wouldn't be on /.!) - I'd say they're thrashing around looking for something - anything - to carve themselves a new niche. Something they can do better than the competition, something that differentiates themselves from every other manufacturer out there. Nokia have spent some time doing the same thing.
Those processors run at only about 1.1 GHz, and ARM isn't quite as snappy on a "per GHz" basis as a typical Intel core because of the power-vs-speed tradeoff, so I figure that a 1.1 GHz ARM quad-core chip has about the same computer power as a single ~3GHz latest generation Intel Xeon core.
They say the can pack 288 quad core ARM processors into 4 rack units (with no disks). For comparison, HP sells blade systems that let you pack in 16 dual-socket blades into 10 rack units. Populate each socket with a 10 core Intel Xeon, and we're talking 320 cores. So for comparison, that's the equivalent of 72 cores per rack unit with ARM, vs 32 with Intel. The memory density is the other way around, with 288 GB per rack unit for ARM, and 614 GB with Intel.
So, if you have a an embarrassingly parallel problem to solve that can fit into 4GB of memory per node, doesn't use much I/O, and can run on Linux, this might be a pretty good idea.
FC/FCoE/iSCSI all deliver much much lower aggregate I/O performance than coordinated use of direct attached storage. Google, Hadoop, GPFS, Lustre all facilitate that sort of usage. You will in any of those remote disk architecture have an I/O bottleneck along the line.
That said, I would presume netboot at least would be there, and from there you can do iSCSI in software certainly. FCoE tends to be a bit pickier, so they may not be able to do that in the network fabric provided.
On the whole, I'm skeptical still yet. So far ARM has proved itself when low power is critical and performance. I'm not sure if performance per watt is going to be impressive (e.g. if it hypothetically takes 10% of the power of a competitor and gave 9% of the performance, that can work well for places like cell phones but perhaps not so much for a datacenter). ARMv8 may make things very interesting though...
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