anon (spam.delete.delete@this.this.spam.com) on October 11, 2018 7:02 am wrote:
> Michael S (already5chosen.delete@this.yahoo.com) on October 11, 2018 4:06 am wrote:
[snip]
> > What prevents Cloudflare from ordering 1S servers with 1.5x or 2.x # of nodes
> > per unit of volume relatively to their current setup (4 nodes per 2U) ?
> >
>
> They'd have to completely redesign the sleds.
> It's doable, half width, DIMM slots and socket in a row instead of next to each other,
> PSU configuration will change, but doable. Considering the extra components it might
> work out once you factor in the lower power consumption, but it's not great.
>
> The problem is right now they're using some standard Quanta 2S boards and they don't offer anything like the
> half width 1S boards they'd need. There's no market for it. No one in their right mind would pay for twice
> the boards and PSUs they need since everyone except QC supports 2S, so all the high density options are 2S.

Is there some fundamental reason why two computers could not share a single motherboard, power supply, etc.?

Obviously such an arrangement would not be as useful as being able to share memory contents (even without cache coherence) and capacity as well as network (and other I/O) interfaces, but it would appear to address the density/form factor and PSU count issues.