Dell Strays Further From Intel Chips, Donates ARM Server to ASF

Says a story at Slash Datacenter: "Dell announced Oct. 24 that it had taken the next step into the low-power server market through the development of a second ARM-based server platform, which it will donate to the Apache Software Foundation for software development and app porting. The 'Zinc' concept runs the Calxeda EnergyCore chip, an ARM-based processor that the company hopes will eventually be featured in data centers running specialized workloads. It follows Dell’s earlier effort, dubbed 'Copper,' which it released in May. Neither server is commercially available, with Dell saying only that it would bring the hardware to market at an 'appropriate time.' Dell has said that it believes that the ARM-based server market is approaching an inflection point, and that it believes now is the right time to help foster development and testing of operating systems and applications for ARM servers. It’s a big step for the company, which has historically been an all-Intel shop, only occasionally buying processors from AMD." The ASF has access to the server (humming in a data center in Austin), and it's been busy: developers have "performed more than a dozen builds within the first 24 hours of the servers’ deployment, and on-going builds are being performed by the Apache Derby, River, Tapestry, and Thrift projects."

Comments

I predict INFINITE Growth!

[CajunArson]

Dell will have INFINITE year-on-year growth for its ARM servers once it manages to sell one. Buy that stock now!

Re:I predict INFINITE Growth!

[Dast]

Yep. And from there on it will all be down-hill for ARM server growth. I already miss the glory-days of ARM server and we've barely even started.

Re:I predict INFINITE Growth!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I predict that by the end of the month, both of you will have a few dozens of spouses.

Dell should just

[Spy Handler]

shut down and give money back to the shareholders.

Re:Dell should just

[bill_mcgonigle]

I've never read an accurate telling of the Dell/Apple story.

Why is this inaccurate?

Negotiating tactic with Intel

[ShanghaiBill]

I think that what is really going on here is that Dell is making these ARM servers to put some heat on Intel to give Dell lower prices. If Intel caves in, the ARM servers are never sold to the public.

Dell used to use the same tactic against Intel, by periodically threatening use AMD CPUs. They also played the "Linux card" against Microsoft from time to time.

Re:Negotiating tactic with Intel

[h4rr4r]

Played the linux card?
You know they sell lots of RHEL servers right?
They also sell a decent number of AMD CPUs in servers as well. For some work loads they make sense.

Aw, hell no. I can already see where this is going

[BLToday]

Dell is thinking of buying AMD. We don't need that. Samsung buying AMD is better.

Re:Intel is dead!

[Bengie]

Intel is not a stagnant monopoly, they have best-in-class R&D. In just the past few years, their IGP has gone from "god-awful" to "almost as good as AMD/nVidia low-end", which is their target. They've also gone from "power hungry desktop chips" to 10%-20% more power draw than ARM7 but 50%-100% better performance.... yeah

This is going to be some great times for everyone except Intel and ARM. They're going to war.

Re:Aw, hell no. I can already see where this is go

[Jeng]

No, what we need is for Nvidia to buy Via which would give Nvidia an in for x86 processors as well as many other similar markets.

Serious Player

[bill_mcgonigle]

If you want a real ARM beast, look into the Slab servers at Baserock. 2400+ cores per rack, air cooled. Plus, they're an open source company.

Re:Serious Player

[petermgreen]

They didn't return my emails asking for price info but I later found an article from the register quoting arround $10K per slab. IMO that is just too much for what they are offering.

Re:Serious Player

[bill_mcgonigle]

They didn't return my emails asking for price info but I later found an article from the register quoting arround $10K per slab. IMO that is just too much for what they are offering.

Thanks. That's interesting - they were on FLOSS Weekly talking about being more cost effective than x86. I can get really nice 64-core 1U AMD systems for under $5K, and those are 64-bit superscalar branch predictive CPU cores running at twice the clock. Inter-VM networking is faster than 10GbE so now I don't get how they could claim it. Power costs won't make up that difference in the machine's useful lifetime.