Ricardo B (ricardo.b.delete@this.xxxxx.xx) on August 16, 2014 8:51 am wrote:
> 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.

As I've said, this is because people keep redefining server to match a certain set of expectations...
Something like a NAS box is doing what used to be called a server (remember "file servers" from the 90s? Maybe you're too young) but while there are some Atom powered NAS boxes today, I'd guess that most are ARM powered.
The same thing is true of communications. You can buy a variety of boxes today that perform various parts of "phone to computer via VoIP" internetworking. Some run Asterisk and act as the PBX, some do more menial tasks like act as FXO or FXS gateways (basically ethernet on one side, traditional phone lines and/or analog handsets on the other side). Once again, most of these run ARM. Once again, these types of boxes used to be called "communication" servers.

If your definition of server basically cuts off at higher than the capabilities of whatever is the current top of the line ARM CPU, then OF COURSE ARM does not provide servers.
But that's like defining computers as mainframes, and then missing out on everything interesting that's happening, from minis to PCs to laptops to cellphones.