Military Data Center In a Suitcase To Get Commercial Release

judgecorp writes: The Mobyl Data Center, designed for the US Department of Defense, puts a data center in a rugged suitcase-sized box, and it will shortly be available commercially. The box includes up to 88 Xeon cores a maximum of 176 GB of RAM, and 2.8 TB of SSD storage with 12TB of hard disk as an option. The system uses credit-card sized MobylPC server units, sealed in epoxy, and rated to survive 300g of shock, but apparently proprietary to the vendor, Arnouse Digital Devices Corp.

Comments

Atoms....not Xeons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction. The article got it wrong too. [E3845]

Re:Atoms....not Xeons.

[hawguy]

Correction. The article got it wrong too. [E3845]

That makes more sense, I couldn't figure out how they were cooling 88 Xeon cores encased in epoxy inside a briefcase. Even the Atom's must pose cooling challenge, but not quite as much as Xeon's.

Re:Atoms....not Xeons.

[GameboyRMH]

Atoms pump out very little heat, the ones I've seen in laptops just have passive cooling, and they're even installed in some tablets.

Re:Atoms....not Xeons.

[davester666]

Of course, you also get a 12 cubic foot backpack filled with batteries to keep it running for 30 minutes...

How heavy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can a normal person just carry it around easily, or is it like one of those heavy suitcases that you have to put down every few steps, to catch your breath?

Re:How heavy?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Depends on what your definition of a "normal person" is.

Re:How heavy?

[_Sharp'r_]

Finally, I've found my new laptop...

It's about time they stopped trying to make every portable super-light and virtually powerless!

But can it run Crysis?

[Anonymous Coward]

No mention of the GPU options.

Re:But can it run Crysis?

[masterofthumbs]

Each card has 2 PCIe x1 buses coming out so if you hade a host machine that had a PCIe slot, then you could run a modern GPU. Maybe even with SLI/Crossfire although I'm not sure if that's reliant on having more PCIe bandwidth. The only issue would be the degradation in bandwidth going to the card as you would be going from something like x16 (or x8 or or x4) down to x1.

VM farm seedlings?

[mlts]

VM farm seedlings, I take it?

On a real note, it is an interesting application using a bunch of small form factor servers. I wonder if there is a switch between each of the nodes, so they can communicate between each other faster than 1-10GB.

Bunker-buster?

[iamacat]

Powering on these 88 Xeons sealed in Epoxy will take care of those pesky underground bunkers better than a nuke.

Re:Bunker-buster?

[Rei]

The chips themselves (E3845, a very low power-consuming model) only consume 10W each, and it's 88 cores (not processors), each processor having 4 cores, so 22 processors consuming 220W. Assumedly these boards are designed for minimal power consumption and provide only a bare minimum of capabilities. The hard drives are SSD, so minimal power consumption there. There doesn't appear to be any sort of graphics, so no power consumption needed for that. RAM isn't usually a big power consumer. So I don't see any reason to think that the system is going to be consuming vast amounts of power. Maybe about the same total as a high-end gaming PC (but with a *lot* more computing power).

On the other hand, with epoxy-encased hardware, I am quite curious as to how they're handling cooling. I'm guessing that while the boards are embedded in epoxy that the surfaces of the processors aren't? And I'd wager that the processors are linked up to a common heat sink, as it'd make no sense to give each one its own fan. Hmm, if they're all connected to the same big chunk of aluminum or copper running all the way through, then it could double as a structural element. Neat. :)

Beyond all of this, the system is battery powered, so we're not looking at any "surge" at all. It's designed for 8 hours of usage at full power or a week of standby. The difference between the two says to me that they do a lot to power down hardware when it's not in use. Also, that battery alone probably weighs about 10-20kg** - although size-wise it's probably only 5-10 liters**, so it should fit fine.

You know, the more I look at these numbers, the more I think it all pans out. You're talking a big, heavy suitcase, but nonetheless, a suitcase.

** - assuming 8h@250-500W@200Wh/kg@400Wh/L or comparable.

Re:Bunker-buster?

[boomer_rehfield]

> I am quite curious as to how they're handling cooling

Open the suitcase lid?

I'll see myself out.

Re:Bunker-buster?

[ceoyoyo]

Yes, the summary is apparently wrong. They're atoms, not Xeons. TDP varies a lot among Xeons, but a reasonably recent quad core one is going to be around 100 watts. 22 of those plus support hardware would make for a very warm suitcase.

Re:Bunker-buster?

[Anonymous Coward]

My 3.3Ghz Ivy Bridge and Haswell Xeon E3's hover in the 50W-60W range as measured at the power outlet even when all 4 cores (8 virtual cores) are pegged, and with 8MB of L3 cache, 16GB-32GB of RAM, both fans spun-up, and a 200W PSU in a 1U case.[1] In other words, the chips don't even come close to the advertised TDP, which is 69W and 80W, respectively. It probably helps that they don't have integrated GPUs. I have 5 of them now for personal use--open source projects and my startup.

The company I work for sells server appliances, and like many such companies they use AMD because of price/performance. The hardware guys simply refused to believe the numbers I gave them until I sent them pictures of the Kill-A-Watt display and top.[2] Xeon E3s sit in an insane sweet spot in terms of price/performance/power. They're incredible.

I assume you're correct that this suitcase contains Atoms. But they _could_ conceivably contain Xeons, especially if they were special models running at less than 2GHz.

[1] They're so low power that I put them in the 11" depth Supermicro cases with 200W PSUs meant for Atom motherboards. The setup is perfect for co-location where power is the biggest expense, not to mention easier to move because they only hang on the front posts. I also have a couple in my office--they don't heat my office in the summer, and in the winter they survive the commercial building's ridiculously overpowered, 100-year-old radiant heater baking them from 2 feet away.

[2] I've tried various ways to peg the CPUs to make sure the numbers were credible. For example, tight loops doing integer or floating-point arithmetic on randomly generated data to make sure the CPUs weren't actually sitting idle on fetches from RAM (which top(1) wouldn't be able to differentiate). But I've also tried admixtures of load to also put stress on the memory bus. I've tried tweaking things to worsen or improve pipelining on the theory that one or the other might draw more power. But no matter how hard I try, I just couldn't get the chips near the TDP. They're amazing. And lest you think they're throttling back, they aren't. I can run the tests for hours with the same throughput as when running for a minute.

Re:Bunker-buster?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd bet there are some heavy thermally and electrically conductive elements in that epox-encasing to protect the system from EMP and reduce the effects of radiation and old fashion bullets.

Re:Bunker-buster?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, that battery alone probably weighs about 10-20kg** - although size-wise it's probably only 5-10 liters**, so it should fit fine.

You know, the more I look at these numbers, the more I think it all pans out. You're talking a big, heavy suitcase, but nonetheless, a suitcase.

** - assuming 8h@250-500W@200Wh/kg@400Wh/L or comparable.

Batteries - 10-20kg boards 10-20kg in the suitcase or rather nice sturdy plastic box.
Add 2 handles and ...for comparison 2 ammo cans M2A1 with 1680 rounds of .223Rem ammo weights ~29kg plus wooden crate weight.
And is moved by 2 soldiers. No problem here.

Re:Bunker-buster?

[ihtoit]

pedant point: a 2.5" SSD consumes just as much, if not more, power than a spinny.

The only physical difference between the two is that one has mechanical moving parts while the other does not.

Re:Bunker-buster?

[Anonymous Coward]

50W-60W range as measured at the power outlet even when all 4 cores (8 virtual cores) are pegged, and with 8MB of L3 cache, 16GB-32GB of RAM, both fans spun-up, and a 200W PSU in a 1U case.[1] In other words, the chips don't even come close to the advertised TDP, which is 69W and 80W

That's the process magic in action. A 35W TDP sandybridge with two cores takes around 50 W with "full load", while a 125W TDP AMD Piledriver can also take double the TDP depending of the conditions. 32nm processes are getting old at this point.

Re:Bunker-buster?

[Anonymous Coward]

+1

Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

Something UPS can only moderately damage.

Re:Finally!

[Anonymous Coward]

At least they get it to the correct address, USPS would deliver it 3 streets over.

* battery life dependent on usage profile.

[Anonymous Coward]

When used for nuclear war, battery life may be significantly shorter. However, it will still exceed operator's life. Good luck Iran!

Interesting Concepts

[Anonymous Coward]

After looking at the product page all kinds of ideas popped into my brain.

http://www.deployabletechnologies.com/BioDigital_PC.html

Re:Interesting Concepts

[masterofthumbs]

Keep one of those host machines at work and one at home setup as a thin client so you can carry your core back and forth to work. Slide it into a host machine, it starts up near instantly because of the SSD and then brings up your remote workspace or even use it as an actual workstation although not sure how quick an Atom is for that. At work, you wouldn't need your own computer so if your company does hotel desks, you have a lot less to carry around. The host machine could just be one of those monitors they show.

Its not too different than those laptops that hook up to an Android phone via USB and HDMI. The real power goes into your pocket and the extra hardware can stay where it is.

Very exciting... as a luggage problem!

[Anonymous Coward]

(oblig quote from Joe vs the Volcano)

Intel E3845 Xeon processor?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is a Intel E3845 Xeon processor?

the closest thing I found is Intel® Atom Processor E3845 (Bay Trail)
http://ark.intel.com/products/78475/Intel-Atom-Processor-E3845-2M-Cache-1_91-GHz

Re:Intel E3845 Xeon processor?

[Archangel Michael]

THIS! I don't believe it is a XEON core, it is ATOM core. Eight hours on battery? This cries ATOM.

Re:Intel E3845 Xeon processor?

[BaronAaron]

Yah I call BS on the Xeon claim.

If it's the Atom processor, the math adds up. It has 4 cores and supports 8GB of RAM which matches up with the 88 core / 176 GB RAM numbers.

Re:Intel E3845 Xeon processor?

[jittles]

What is a Intel E3845 Xeon processor?

the closest thing I found is Intel® Atom Processor E3845 (Bay Trail) http://ark.intel.com/products/...

The older version of the card is indeed an atom processor: BioDigital PC. I can't find anything indicating what the CPU type is in the latest, but I am guessing the BioDigital 7 also uses an Atom processor.

I will say that I have an Ivy Bridge Xeon processor that has a max TDP of 45W. In a fanless configuration, with an SSD, my average power consumption is 8W. I've never gotten it above 15W. This is with multiple VMs running, though I haven't tried to intentionally push it to its limits using something like Passmark. It's very fast for the power usage. I do not believe they make anything below 60W in the more modern architectures, however.

Re:Intel E3845 Xeon processor?

[matfud]

BioDigital 7 are amd 2 or 4 core processors with GPUs

http://www.deployabletechnolog...

Re:Intel E3845 Xeon processor?

[jittles]

heh. Guess I need to learn to read. Thanks.

Re:Intel E3845 Xeon processor?

[Anonymous Coward]

My 3.3Ghz Xeon E3s (Ivy Bridge: 69W TDP; Haswell: 80W) never even hit 60W, and that's as measured at the outlet, with 32GB of RAM in 1U cases with 2 internal fans and a 200W PSU. My models don't have GPUs (or at least the GPUs are disabled), which may partially account for why they perform well below the advertised power envelope.

I've tried everything I could to push them (see another AC post above). They just never get close to their TDP, no matter how many hours I push them full bore.

Re:Intel E3845 Xeon processor?

[FatdogHaiku]

You doubt the mighty Xeon? Looks like someone wants to ride a DC-8 into a volcano!
(wait... what?)
Never Mind...

I understand why they need all that power

[TheGratefulNet]

they are running the latest version of systemd!

Re:I understand why they need all that power

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess simply swallowing stderr rather than logging it saves power.

Re:I understand why they need all that power

[Ol Olsoc]

they are running the latest version of systemd!

psst. The systemd comments are getting to be right up there with the golden girls, the hostfile guy, and the cows go moo critter.

If ya gotta do that, you should post it AC, ya know?

Re:I understand why they need all that power

[Anonymous Coward]

Very funny. I guess it's easy to right efficient code when you ignore UNIX conventions we've all come to depend on like exit statuses, syslog, and stderr. But seriously, it is a pain to troubleshoot problems with systemd without those standard tools.

Re: I understand why they need all that power

[sys64764]

The hostfile guy? Care to share?

Re: I understand why they need all that power

[Anonymous Coward]

APK. Gotta be careful you don't say APK's name three times in one post, though, or APK will show up.

crap ...

Re: I understand why they need all that power

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, my. You are in for a real treat.

Observe, my son|daughter|calf...

Hey, APK! Think your most highly BOGUS host files string parser can peg all 88 of those CPUs the way it does on a typical desktop?

Now just keep watching the bobber, it'll start moving any time now.

Re: I understand why they need all that power

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, APK is a pal and a cosmonaut. Cosmonauts go MOO! MOO, you cosmonauts!

Re: I understand why they need all that power

[GungaDan]

No! Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!

Sorry, I thought you said "hostile."

Re: I understand why they need all that power

[Ol Olsoc]

The hostfile guy? Care to share?

Haven't you seen his posts? He goes on a rant about that every so often. Long long rants.

We're living dangerously just chatting about him lest he strike us down with his bullshit.

Re: I understand why they need all that power

[KGIII]

I have observed and poked him. He is mostly harmless and a bit zealous about the hosts file. I dare say he almost sort of makes us what is the Slashdot culture. Not him, by himself, of course but him as an inclusion of all of us. I was, at one point, going to email him a suggestion for his application but I decided it would be a waste of time - not for him but for the feature I had in mind. He is not much "worse" than the rest of us on any one of a number of given subjects. Then again, I like poking people to see what comes out. I am mostly here to watch with and interact with the strange creatures that I found so many years ago. I am thoroughly convinced there should be a study (or ten) done on Slashdotters.

Cooling?

[EmperorArthur]

Any processor, much less Xenons, in Epoxy is going to get hot. Like, the epoxy is going to melt hot.
Even without the epoxy, that's a huge power profile in a small space. How exactly are they going to cool that?

Re:Cooling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you feel compelled to comment about this before doing even the most rudimentary research I will just clue you in; there are entire families of thermally conductive (but not electrically conductive) epoxy designed specifically for this type of purpose (high heat electronics / electric components that need to be secured).

Heck, many (most?) passively cooled imbedded processors use a thermal epoxy to connect the heat sink to the processor.

Re:Cooling?

[bobbied]

Any processor, much less Xenons, in Epoxy is going to get hot. Like, the epoxy is going to melt hot. Even without the epoxy, that's a huge power profile in a small space. How exactly are they going to cool that?

It is called conductive cooling...

Re:Cooling?

[bruce_the_loon]

Even if you ignore the thermally conductive epoxies somebody else mentioned, simple.

Before you resin-pot the boards, you put a water-cooling heat exchanger on the chip and pipe the coolant to a radiator outside the epoxy block. Or if the thermal profile is low enough, you can do it with passive heat pipes like those inside my laptop.

Advantage of mobile data centers...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's faster and cheaper to move a data center than shipping all those H1-b's all over the world. A win-win! Except for congressmen who receive most of their pay in manila envelopes.

Business in a box

[unixcorn]

I can see many uses for this. Here in the midwest, where tornadoes are common, insurance companies often provide a business a discount if they physically harden their data centers. If one was to rebuild their infrastructure on one of these devices, and store it securely, I wonder if that would qualify?

Price?

[plcurechax]

What is the pricing on these things? (base or standard configuration)

I would imagine they could be an attractive option for business continuity planning, but personally as a compact, tidy and suitable for global field deployment so that in the field operations don't have to be restricted by real-time networking limitations via cellular or satellite communications, where all requests are relayed back to conventional data centres.

Re:Price?

[Anonymous Coward]

the basic modules are in the few hundred bucks range, depending on memory size, speed, etc.

They're kind of neat: very wide temperature range, take hostile environments (waterproof, etc.), but they do have a custom connector and so forth.

Imagine a low end mini-itx computer shrunk down and encapsulated in epoxy.

Why would you need a mobile data center?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you need a mobile data center? I can understand a mobile server, but if you think you need a mobile data center, maybe you don't understand the concept of "data center".

Re:Why would you need a mobile data center?

[xtal]

No reliable connectivity in many parts of the world; if you need to do processing there, you need an option, and this is it.

Mineral extraction companies, survey companies, military operations, all sorts of industries could make use of something like this.

Re:Why would you need a mobile data center?

[mcrbids]

I'm sure the $$ wouldn't be all that great, though. You better *really need* that processing power.

A single set of hot swapable batteries ???

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be interested how this might work...

Re: A single set of hot swapable batteries ???

[Anonymous Coward]

A set of supercapacitors working as a buffer?

I thought this would be useful...

[TrentTheThief]

... until I realized that it doesn't have enough storage to serve my local porn stash.

Re:I thought this would be useful...

[KGIII]

I have not had a porn stash in, like, ten years or more. Hell, for a while I was on dialup in that time and I still did not have a porn stash. Hell, I was on satellite and did not have a porn stash. There is just so much porn that, and I will save the whole fucking internet - it is bad, I just can not see any reason to save any. I have Windows executables older than most of the people here - cryptically named "Setup.exe" which is really helpful in deciding why I saved that file from 1998. But no, I have no porn. Well, no professional porn. I might have an image of an ex-girlfriend or ten kicking around but I'll be damned if I know where they are. Conversely, there is likely a picture of my penis (or ten) on the internet. I do not have a local copy. I can make more.

Pointless amount of RAM

[Anonymous Coward]

176GB of RAM with 88 cores is good for computation-intensive works, but for database it's kinda pointless. Not to mention the storage space !

Typo, right?

[beschra]

and rated to survive 300g of shock

surely it must be 300kg?

Re:Typo, right?

[beschra]

Ah. 300G. That makes more sense.

Re:More disgusting Republican corporate welfare

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

And since you've been brainwashed that "communism is evil" you can't imagine any other alternative.

Re:List of US wars since 2000, and whether won.

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

The war against drugs. It will never stop.

The war against terrorism. It will never stop.*

* I'd like to see some Swordfish-style ass-kicking against terrorists.

Military data center in a suitcase?

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Next up: battle armour in a suitcase, because you know some general somewhere just saw Iron Man 2.

Da power

[Hydrian]

Yea, that's great server density. But how are you going to power it? Can it run off of a standard 15/20amp Edison? What about other power standards? Yea, it is powerful, compact, and portable but if you can't power in many locations, it an expensive door stop.

Re:Da power

[masterofthumbs]

It runs on a hot-swapable battery system. The specs say 8 hours at 100% usage and a week on standby for one battery which is pretty good since if you are carrying this into the field, you can afford to carry a few more fully charged batteries with you or just have a small generator.

An Intel E3845 has a TDP of 10W so assuming peak power is 1.5 x TDP, then this would draw 15W as 100% power usage. There are 22 of these devices so there is a total of 330W dedicated to just the CPUs. There is no GPU, SSDs take up very little power as well as RAM so we can assume that the whole thing is taking up no more than 400W at 100% usage. A Li-ion battery has an energy density of 110-160 Wh/kg so lets assume its 110 Wh/kg. To run this thing for 8 hours at 100% usage with 400W of hardware power usage, you would need a 29 kg ~ 64 lb Li-ion battery. Energy density of 160 Wh/kg would need a 20 kg ~ 44 lb battery.

Or get yourself a little 1000W generator and run the system for a week on 30 gallons of gasoline.

Re:List of US wars since 2000, and whether won.

[Anonymous Coward]

The war against drugs. It will never stop.

The war against terrorism. It will never stop.*

* I'd like to see some Swordfish-style ass-kicking against terrorists.

Nonsense, any day now our troops will be marching in and occupying the capital city of the nation of "terrorism" and... oh, wait. Well, ok, any day now our glorious army will be conquering the capital city of the nation of "drugs" and their leaders will be forced to surren... oh, crap.

Ideas are sure hard to fight aren't they? It's so much easier to invade nations with capitals you can occupy and governments you can get rid of...

windows 10?

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like fun for that remote deserted desert island lan party.
just wondering
1. Does it have solitaire preloaded or do you have to pay the $10.00 annual license fee?
2. does it by default share all your info to whoever it wants

Re:More disgusting Republican corporate welfare

[Anonymous Coward]

Communism doesn't solve cronyism.

Beowulf cluster, anyone?

[mi]

Am I the only one struggling to imagine a Beowulf cluster of these? What's /. coming to?

Re:Beowulf cluster, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be more of a Beowulf luggage carousel

Re:More disgusting Republican corporate welfare

[Anonymous Coward]

Communism is INSTITUTIONALIZED cronyism

Anticipating This Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking News: OPM Portable data center lost at airport. Was your data compromised, more at 11.

Hillary on the run

[Anonymous Coward]

When you need that e-mail server and you need it now.

Finally...

[Anonymous Coward]

...room for all my Sailor Moon files! But how to back up? Better get two.

Easy to clone that fucker

[Anonymous Coward]

Military grade my foot !!

Cloning this fucker takes about a week in any of the hundreds of Chinese shops in Shenzhen

Re: Easy to clone that fucker

[Anonymous Coward]

Military grade is spec, not technology.

Your second sentence doesn't make sense or irrelevant.

The phone configs of our grand-kids?

[Anonymous Coward]

Our grand-kids will probably have phones with similar technical (not physical) specifications. Think about it.