At the MiTAC GFX ARM Powered Server launch at Computex 2012, Gary Rumney, Senior Advisory Engineer at MiTAC, the architect of the MiTAC GFX ARM Powered Server system and Ian Ferguson, Director of Server Systems and Ecosystem at ARM talk at the launch of the MiTAC GFX ARM Powered Server system at Computex 2012.
Category: Servers
MiTAC GFX ARM Server Launch: Gary Rumney and Ian Ferguson talk about ARM Powered Servers
Posted by – June 6, 2012
ARM Servers Keynote: Ian Ferguson and Mark Shuttleworth at Computex 2012
Posted by – June 6, 2012
This is the unveiling of the MiTAC GFX ARM Powered Server at Computex 2012 during the 25-minute keynote presentation by Ian Ferguson, Director of Server Systems and Ecosystem at ARM and Mark Shuttleworth, leader of the Ubuntu Project.
Theo Valich, founder and editor in chief of Bright Side of News
Posted by – June 5, 2012
Theo Valich talks about his latest leak of Intel’s 2013/2014 Haswell processor specs, yup, Intel’s answer to the ARM threat is to crank up power consumption to 160W and 190 Amps he talks about his opinions on the industry, ARM vs Intel vs AMD etc.
Mark Shuttleworth at Linaro Connect
Posted by – June 2, 2012
Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Canonical talks about Ubuntu on ARM and Canonical at Linaro.
David Mandala of Canonical at Linaro Connect
Posted by – May 31, 2012
David Mandala talks about Ubuntu on ARM, the direction of it going onto servers and Canonical’s involvement in Linaro.
Dell unveils ARM Powered servers
Check out the articles on Google News.
The 3U rackmount chassis has 48 ARM servers with a total of 192 processor cores, with each ARM server drawing a maximum of 15 watts of power. Each server uses Marvell’s quad-core Armada XP 78460 chip, which runs at 1.6GHz, and has error correction features, networking and storage components.
Related articles
- See what cloud can do! Dell unveils ARM servers (gigaom.com)
Huawei Modular Data Center (IDS2000)
Posted by – March 8, 2012
Huawei talks about how their modular data center system provides Simple Deployment, Scalable Design, Energy Saving and Smart Management for their Modular Data Center solution for enterprises, anyone building data centers.
Status of Ubuntu for ARM Laptops and Servers
Posted by – January 24, 2012
David Mandala, Manager of the ARM Team at Canonical talks about the status of Ubuntu Linux on ARM Laptops and Servers, and about their plans for Ubuntu on ARM until 2014 and beyond. Who wouldn’t want to buy an awesome $199 ARM Powered Ultrabook, 13.3″ screen, ARM Cortex-A9 1.5Ghz TI OMAP4460 or 1.8Ghz TI OMAP4470, thinner, lighter than Intel Ultrabooks, 2x longer battery life on a smaller thinner battery (10x with the sunlight readable Pixel Qi), 1GB or 2GB RAM for full speed Chrome and Firefox web browser speeds?
Talking about the status of Ubuntu on TI OMAP3 (beagleboard), OMAP4 (pandaboard), Marvell, Freescale, Calxeda, plans for Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 optimizations by Ubuntu 12.10, ARM Cortex-A15, ARM Cortex-A7, ARMv8 64bit, the imminent inclusion of full hard-float optimization in Ubuntu 12.4 on ARM:
With Ubuntu 12.04 on ARM there is also hard-float support (ARMhf), as previously talked about on Phoronix, and this will mean a huge performance boost for many workloads. Mandala said the performance boost they are seeing is between 5% and 30% improvement for floating-point operations. Also benefiting greatly for end-users is improved font-rendering, web-page scrolling, and other operations from this ARM hardfp support. Other code is also benefiting due to better use of the stack calling convention.
Source: phoronix.com
Related articles
- Genesi’s Hard Float optimizations speeds up Linux performance up to 300% on ARM Laptops (armdevices.net)
- ARM Powered Server Calxeda EnergyCore launch video (armdevices.net)
- Ubuntu at ARM TechCon 2011 (armdevices.net)
- Linaro ARM Linux optimizations status at the Freescale Technology Forum (armdevices.net)
- A further update on Linaro status at Computex 2011 (armdevices.net)
- Canonical explains the status of Ubuntu on ARM Powered Laptops (armdevices.net)
AppliedMicro X-Gene ARMv8 64-bit Server-on-chip shown on FPGA
Posted by – November 9, 2011
At ARM TechCon 2011 last week, Applied Micro was able to show their ARMv8 platform design already running on an FPGA, to be sent out to their partners in January so they can start working on the software for when they can have working silicon of their ARMv8 64-bit Server-on-chip platform, they say as early as in the 2nd half of 2012 already. Here is the full keynote presentation featuring Paramesh Gopi, president and CEO of Applied Micro, Lance Howarth, EVP Marketing at ARM, Dr. Christos Kozyrakis of Stanford University, Andrew Feldman, Founder and CEO of SeaMicro and Vinay Ravuri, Vice President of AppliedMicro’s Embedded and Processing Business Unit, presenting the worlds first ARMv8 64-bit processor demo running on an FPGA. I recommend that you watch the full webcast with slides on Applied Micro’s own website (enter a name and email to start watching in full screen with the synchronized slides), and here is the YouTube version without the slides as published by youtube.com/cnxlinux:
One can thus possibly understand from this that the ARM Powered Servers are going to be upgraded twice in the next year. Powered by Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 now such as the HP Moonshot project powered by Calxeda EnergyCore, likely upgraded to ARM Cortex-A15 solutions (up to 8 cores) as soon as those are ready (2H 2012) and then again upgraded to ARMv8 64-bit running at up to 3Ghz which is what Applied Micro is saying that they can deliver early silicon of in just about a year from now. Thus ARM Powered Servers are going to run at up to full performance levels, not only being suitable for lower power consumption and lower price but also aiming to deliver the full maximum performance that some people building servers say they need.
Related articles
- Applied Micro leaps ahead in ARM server race (go.theregister.com)
- 64-bit ARMv8 architecture to debut in AppliedMicro X Gene SoC (linuxfordevices.com)
- ARM targets 64-bit servers (h-online.com)
- Friday Video (late): Want more info on the AppliedMicro 64-bit ARM v8 X-Gene server SoC? Photos and a link to a video (eda360insider.wordpress.com)
- AppliedMicro demos FPGA emulation of multicore server chip based on new 64-bit ARMv8 architecture (eda360insider.wordpress.com)
- ARMv8 detailed: 64-bit architecture, AppliedMicro first in line (engadget.com)
ARM Servers getting ready to disrupt Intel’s $50Billion/year server market
10x less power consumption, 40x less cables, 10x less switches, 20x less racks, 4x more servers for 3x lower cost.
HP, the biggest Server maker in the world, is launching the ARM Powered Project Moonshot to revolutionize the server market. Together with Calxeda, they are launching the new custom designed Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 EnergyCore processor that can be stuffed in a completely redesigned server rack to offer many more servers in a much smaller space and consuming much less power at a much lower cost.
You can be sure Google, Facebook, Amazon are looking into using these instead of Intel servers as soon as possible.
Now that Intel is losing the battle to powering the client device, they are also about to loose the battle to powering the cloud.
One little warning though. HP is Intel’s biggest Server customer today. Intel provides most of the server processors for HP’s $16 Billion per year server business today. So you never know what kinds of threats or “incentives” Intel might come up with now that HP has announced the Project Moonshot and Intel might try to lure HP into getting a discount on current server chips and using the Intel Atom instead. Expect Google, IBM, Dell and others to soon announce their own ARM Powered server projects also.
Related articles
- HP’s Project Moonshot Targets Low-Power Servers (datacenterknowledge.com)
- HP Project Moonshot reveals low-power Redstone ARM servers (slashgear.com)
- HP’s Project Moonshot works on low-power ARM, Atom servers (electronista.com)
- ARM Breaks Into One Of Intel’s Strongholds (ARMH, INTC, HPQ) (businessinsider.com)
- HP Project Moonshot hurls ARM servers into the heavens (go.theregister.com)
- Ubuntu Cloud Portal: Ubuntu & HP’s project Moonshot (cloud.ubuntu.com)
- HP’s Project Moonshot aims to make ARM servers mainstream (zdnet.com)
Ubuntu at ARM TechCon 2011
Posted by – October 27, 2011
Category: Laptops, Servers, Development Boards, Exclusive videos, Texas Instruments, Nvidia, ARM TechCon, Ubuntu
They are showing Ubuntu 11.10 running on the Toshiba AC100, and Ubuntu 11.10 Server Edition running on the OMAP4 Pandaboard.
Ubuntu for ARM Powered Servers, to go mainstream within 2 years
Canonical is working with ARM and Calxeda to prepare the customized and optimized Ubuntu Server Edition software to run on ARM Powered servers once they are ready.
With Ubuntu Server becoming the de-facto standard for cloud infrastructure and big data solutions, we recognise that power consumption is key to efficient scaling. Building on four years of working with ARM, we are now taking the step of supporting Ubuntu Server on ARM. We expect these processors to be used in a variety of use cases including microservers.
This is a first step and there will be many revisions of processors, hardware designs and of software as the performance and supported server workloads optimised for ARM grow over the next four years. It is, however, a first crucial step towards a new technology and one where yet again open-source innovation leads.
The new addition to the Ubuntu family | First release in October 2011
In October, the Ubuntu Server 11.10 release will be simultaneously available for x86, x86-64 and ARM-based architectures. The base image of the releases will be the same across architectures with a common kernel baseline. The ARM architecture will also be part of the long-term support (LTS) version of Ubuntu Server in 12.04 and other future releases.
Initial development focus and optimisation will be around the most popular Ubuntu workloads of web/network infrastructure and distributed data processing via NoSQL or big data applications where workloads typically use hundreds or thousands of systems.
Source: blog.canonical.com
ARM Powered servers designed by Calxeda could be 10x more efficient than Intel
Posted by – March 14, 2011
Category: Servers
Calxeda Inc, formerly known as Smooth-Stone, is the new company formed by ARM Holdings, Texas Instruments, ATIC (same invesors as in GlobalFoundries and AMD) and others that have provided at least $48 Million in investment to set it up. They are optimizing the designs for ARM Powered servers to be implemented by Server OEM partners around the world. As reported by Forrester Research’s Richard Fichera:
While still holding their actual delivery dates and details of specifications close to their vest, Calxeda did reveal the following cards from their hand:
- The first reference design, which will be provided to OEM partners as well as delivered directly to selected end users and developers, will be based on an ARM Cortex A9 quad-core SOC design.
- The SOC, as Calxeda will demonstrate with one of its reference designs, will enable OEMs to design servers as dense as 120 ARM quad-core nodes (480 cores) in a 2U enclosure, with an average consumption of about 5 watts per node (1.25 watts per core) including DRAM.
- While not forthcoming with details about the performance, topology or protocols, the SOC will contain an embedded fabric for the individual quad-core SOC servers to communicate with each other.
- Most significantly for prospective users, Calxeda is claiming, and has some convincing models to back up these claims, that they will provide a performance advantage of 5X to 10X the performance/watt and (even higher when price is factored in for a metric of performance/watt/$) of any products they expect to see when they bring the product to market.
ARM Powered servers could have 5X to 10X the performance/watt compared to Intel’s x86.
As you can read on Calxeda’s website, the operating expense associated with power and cooling now dominates a server’s cost of ownership, and will eclipse the hardware itself by a factor of 7X in 2012. IDC reports that all servers worldwide consumed $44.5 Billion of electricity in 2010 and require ten additional Gigawatt power plants to be constructed.
Related articles
- ARM Chips Designed For 480-Core Servers (hardware.slashdot.org)
- Calxeda’s ARM Chips Designed for 480-core Servers (pcworld.com)
- ARM CEO: No Rush to Design a 64-bit Server Chip (pcworld.com)
- NVIDIA Project Denver: ARM Powered Servers (perspectives.mvdirona.com)
- Calxeda opens the kimono for a tantalizing tease of new ARM servers (zdnet.com)
Marvell Armada XP Quad-core ARM Powered Servers
Posted by – November 11, 2010
A discussion with Marvell about their ARM Powered Servers which could take over the whole cloud computing servers market.
Smooth-Stone ARM Powered Servers to disrupt cloud computing server market
Posted by – August 16, 2010
Category: Servers
ARM Powered Servers could be cheaper and consume less power and still provide the same performance as Intel. Smooth-Stone is developing some specific ARM processors and system on chip hardware configurations for use in servers to power cloud computing. Smooth-Stone has just announced that they have raised $48 Million from investors including ARM, ATIC (owner of Globalfoundries and part of AMD), Texas Instruments, Battery Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners and Highland Capital Partners.
Smooth-Stone will make it possible for data center managers to increase the density of their computer resources while significantly reduce need for power, space and cooling. At the same time, Smooth-Stone technology will contribute to the reduction of the CO2 footprint of the data center in a significant way.
In a previously announced project, Marvell is also working on Server specific versions of their Marvell ARM processors. This is going to be fun!
My guess is that these new ARM server processors may be based on ARM Cortex A9, come at as little as very small 28nm process size, come with many cores for server-optimized parallel processing. More speculation:
Server chips won’t need the graphics and signal processors that most high-performance ARM chips have (as the latter are targeted at media applications), but may need larger caches and MMUs capable of addressing more than 4GB of physical memory. Even if ARM has only 4GB logical address space, you can let different processes have different 4GB chunks of a larger physical memory.
What specific hardware configurations and SoC designs do you think these ARM Servers should include? What do you think the power consumption will be for a given performance level compared to Intel? What do you think the price difference will be between an ARM Powered server-park and one powered by Intel? You can post in the comments.
Source: http://www.smooth-stone.com/smooth-stone-48m-funding/
Found via: techmeme.com
ARM in servers
Marvell is announcing the plan to offer 40-nm multicore ARM processors in servers. This is big news. It means ARM may not only power all phones, tablets, e-readers, laptops, TVs and desktops of the future, it may also power the cloud computing that serves all those devices.
In terms of price, there is a huge gap between Intel’s Xeon chips some of which sell for several hundred dollars and the typical multicore ARM chip that may sell for about $35. That gives Marvell plenty of room to carve out its own profits.
The new chips will offer more than a five-fold reduction in power consumption compared to x86 processors that dominate the server market, Marvell claims.
Marvell and ARM are working with “multiple Tier 1 companies” to build larger trial deployments to validate ARM as a server platform.
partners are working on ports to ARM of x86 virtualization software also strategic for the server market.
Source: Eetimes.com
Google could be one of the “tier one companies building larger server deployments to validate ARM as a server platform”. Torben Mogensen speculates:
I think Cortex A9 multicore would be fine for its purpose. But they may design their own chip built around this core. Server chips won’t need the graphics and signal processors that most high-performance ARM chips have (as the latter are targeted at media applications), but may need larger caches and MMUs capable of addressing more than 4GB of physical memory. Even if ARM has only 4GB logical address space, you can let different processes have different 4GB chunks of a larger physical memory.
But, instead of designing their own, Google may just ask Marvell, Qualcom, Nvidia or TI to design a chip to their specifications. If Google promises to buy a million chips per year, I’m sure these companies would be quite happy to do so.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Why Intel Will Be a Mobile Loser (gigaom.com)
- Will Google have its chips? (go.theregister.com)
- Watch Out Intel! Marvell to Make ARM-based Server Chips (gigaom.com)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1e474588-80ac-4f92-ae4b-a09df10e921e)
