By: Ricardo B (ricardo.b.delete@this.xxxxx.xx), August 16, 2014 8:51 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Maynard Handley (name99.delete@this.name99.org) on August 15, 2014 4:41 pm wrote:
> On the other hand, the ARM proponent are trying to be a lot more catholic in their tastes. They see
> a "server" as a much more generic term, and see everywhere they look, jobs that could be done perfectly
> well with boxes that are cheap, that don't demand particular RAS features, that can run fairly generic
> software, that can be unbalanced in various ways (whether it's amount of RAM, or RAM bandwidth, or
> IO or whatever). They see a world which needs ever more CDNs, ever more memcached boxes, maybe boxes
> that sit between IPv6 and IPv4 networks and translate between them, maybe boxes that do nothing but
> scan twitter feeds looking for keywords and correlating activity, etc etc.
> Point is, they see a world of computing tasks to be done, and which can be done adequately, and a lot more
> cheaply, on various models of these upcoming ARM "server" SoCs. In many ways this is no different from the
> point in the mid-90's where first Google and then a few other internet companies made a big deal about the
> fact that they did not need (and were not prepared to pay) for "server" quality hardware --- they were quite
> happy to put together boxes that did what they needed and did not do a damn thing more.
> The frustration arises because the pro-x86 people appear to refuse to engage with this possibility
That's all bullshit. It's not about the definition of a server. It's about performance, power and price/cost.
To succeed, upcoming ARM server systems need to do those tasks you've just described with better performance/price, performance/power or performance/ToC than x86 server systems.
And what we've seen so far were ARM server systems failing at that even for friendly workloads like front-end web servers.
Yet, some "pro-ARM" supporters remain adamant in assuming that the upcoming ARM server SoC will succeed.
> On the other hand, the ARM proponent are trying to be a lot more catholic in their tastes. They see
> a "server" as a much more generic term, and see everywhere they look, jobs that could be done perfectly
> well with boxes that are cheap, that don't demand particular RAS features, that can run fairly generic
> software, that can be unbalanced in various ways (whether it's amount of RAM, or RAM bandwidth, or
> IO or whatever). They see a world which needs ever more CDNs, ever more memcached boxes, maybe boxes
> that sit between IPv6 and IPv4 networks and translate between them, maybe boxes that do nothing but
> scan twitter feeds looking for keywords and correlating activity, etc etc.
> Point is, they see a world of computing tasks to be done, and which can be done adequately, and a lot more
> cheaply, on various models of these upcoming ARM "server" SoCs. In many ways this is no different from the
> point in the mid-90's where first Google and then a few other internet companies made a big deal about the
> fact that they did not need (and were not prepared to pay) for "server" quality hardware --- they were quite
> happy to put together boxes that did what they needed and did not do a damn thing more.
> The frustration arises because the pro-x86 people appear to refuse to engage with this possibility
That's all bullshit. It's not about the definition of a server. It's about performance, power and price/cost.
To succeed, upcoming ARM server systems need to do those tasks you've just described with better performance/price, performance/power or performance/ToC than x86 server systems.
And what we've seen so far were ARM server systems failing at that even for friendly workloads like front-end web servers.
Yet, some "pro-ARM" supporters remain adamant in assuming that the upcoming ARM server SoC will succeed.
