Wind of Change: ARM Server Expansion Continues
Server ARM close. The architecture, which is so well established in most modern smartphones and tablets, is gradually penetrating the server segment. Just 4 months ago, I wrote that two manufacturers of server ARM processors prepared test platforms for developers. Recently I decided to read what's new in this world, and I was surprised at the changes that have occurred. HP has already released two server platforms for sale, Microsoft is testing a server version of Windows on the ARM architecture, a commercial ARM-based cloud has appeared ...
The ecosystem of ARM servers is still young. Almost every article about it necessarily contains at least one paragraph describing the advantages of architecture over x86. Be sure to talk about lower power consumption, often also mention the convenience of building specialized solutions, adapted for high performance on certain tasks. Details about the advantages and disadvantages of the ARM architecture, we wrote earlier in our blog. And in this post we will talk about real examples of its practical implementation by both equipment manufacturers and service providers.
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After only 2 days after the previous publication, AMD opened the sale of its test platforms for developers based on 64-bit ARM processors AMD Opteron A1100. Line specifications:
Together with the platform comes a special build of Linux, compiled under the architecture. A lot of standard software is already compiled / modified under ARM. Software and hardware developers are created all the conditions for the adaptation and debugging of their developments in the new environment. If you also feel the need for a test environment, or you just got an itch in your hands and free $ 3000, you can order a platform for developers on the AMD website .
In the future, AMD plans to develop a conceptual architecture of socket-compatible platforms, in which a SoC (System-on-Chip, system on a chip) based on x86 and ARM would be interchangeable, and based on which other manufacturers of server platforms could create universal solutions. The chips will have similar cores for I / O, memory and graphics. This project was named SkyBridge. In 2015, the company plans to complete the development of a basic architecture and demonstrate the first turnkey solutions that work on its basis. However, it has not yet been reported whether the iron producers themselves are interested in such solutions, therefore at this stage the idea may seem dubious.
AMD was and still is Intel’s main competitor in the x86 computer processor market, and Intel is gradually pushing the company out of this market. According to some data in recent years, AMD’s market share has declined from approximately 40% to 25% in the user segment and from approximately 15% to 2-3% in the server segment. Apparently, it is precisely this fact that caused such a keen interest in the emerging market of ARM. Accumulated over the years, knowledge and developments according to experts should help AMD in the active and serious market conquest. But here competitors gradually appear.
At the end of May, Applied Micro Circuits together with Canonical (a company that supports the development of Ubuntu) demonstrated the work of software deployed on a platform based on 64-bit ARM. The demonstration used the latest release of OpenStack, which used Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in the virtual KVM environment. Deploy was produced on a server based on SoC X-Gene. Companies have demonstrated the work of applications such as Elasticsearch, SugarCRM, Kibana, Logstash, Hadoop and MediaWiki.
Just the other day, Applied Micro also released its X-C1 platform for developers and set a nice promotional price on it, which makes it much more affordable than AMD. The platform is available in two variations: Basic and Plus. Variations of processor performance, initial memory, and the number of SATA ports differ (for Basic, it seems, only one). Plus version also comes with a desktop mini-ATX chassis, and Basic comes only with a power supply. More details can be found on the company's website . The total price of the platforms is $ 1,495 for Basic and $ 2,495 for Plus, however developers have a chance to get special prices: $ 895 and $ 1395, respectively. To do this, you must fill out a form on the company's website, after which she will decide whether to give you a discount or not.
Recently, the semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm, which dominates the chip market for smartphones, announced its ambitions to bite off a piece of cake from the server market. So far this is only a declaration of intent, but the company, apparently, is serious. It is not yet known how deeply they will be able to penetrate the specifics of the server market, but this is in any case a good sign and “plus in karma” for ARM.
The specificity of the ARM architecture facilitates the development of solutions tailored for specific tasks. And if the announcements of new x86 platforms usually look like this: “our solution will move mountains and tidy up in the August stables”, then the announcements of commercial ARM platforms I have met are usually more substantive: “our solution is adapted to ...”
HP was the first to introduce its servers on the market. More precisely, these are not standalone servers, but cartridges for the Moonshot platform developed by the company. This compact system holds up to 45 cartridges and is made in the 4.3 U form factor, which allows you to place 10 such systems in a rack. Thus, up to 1800 server cartridges can fit in one rack! Read more about Moonshot on the HP website .
All HP cartridges are individually tailored. The m400 is based on the already known 64-bit 8-core chip from Applied Micro X-Gene, which has a clock frequency of 2.4GHz. The cartridge is set to 64GB of RAM, optionally an 120GB, 240GB or 480GB SSD disk can be installed.
Each SoC is equipped with a 10 Gbps network interface. The cartridge consumes up to 75 W at peak load and about 42 W in standby mode. Particular attention in developing the system was paid to working with memory, so it would be an ideal option for working with caching applications like mamcached. The cost of a chassis with 15 cartridges, a switch and 3 power supplies starts at $ 58,000.
m800, another cartridge from HP, created in conjunction with other professionals in their field. Texas Instruments, specializing in digital signal processing (DSP) solutions, developed a 32-bit ARM processor with a clock speed of 1.0 GHz, containing 4 processor cores and 8 DSP cores. Each cartridge comes with four such processors, 8-32GB of RAM, a 32 or 64GB SSD, and gigabit network interfaces (1 dual channel interface per processor). All the SoCs within the cartridge are interconnected, which allows them to “share” the memory and the data stored in it.
The advantages of this system are not so much in computer as in DSP cores. Thanks to them, the platform is suitable for such tasks as video processing and encoding, analysis of audio and other digital data in real time. According to the vice-president of the project Moonshot, servers based on this type of cartridges use Paypal for rapid data analysis.
Each cartridge consumes up to 87 watts under full load and 48 watts when idle. For the chassis with 15 cartridges, equipped with 32-gigabyte drives, a switch and 4 power supplies will have to pay from $ 82,000.
Actually, the development of Dell still can not be called commercial, although I would love to. In its best traditions, when the rest are already selling, Dell still pulls the cat for all the details, modifies, tests and walks through the presentations:
There is no particularly detailed information about the new platform, but it is known (mainly from the same presentation) that the storage servers are based on the 64-bit ARM X-Gene processor created by Applied Micro and can fit 12 disks in a 1U chassis.
According to unofficial data, Microsoft is testing a special build of Windows Server, adapted to work with the ARM architecture. The announcement of this, published in Bloomberg Businessweek , is filled with so many conspiracies that it’s hard to understand whether Microsoft really deliberately hides the availability of a test version of its ARM-based OS, or is it just such a marketing move to get attention. However, the fact remains: if Microsoft creates an ARM version of Windows that is fully compatible with all existing applications, this can give a powerful impetus to the development of not only the server, but also the user segment.
Hosting division of a major French provider decided to build a cloud on their own. Moreover, it was decided to abandon popular solutions like OpenStack and do everything on their own from scratch, starting with hardware design and ending with software development, which took 2.5 years of work. The servers used in the system are based on a 32-bit 4-core Marvell ARMv7 chip, each one has 2GB of RAM, and each individual server can easily fit in the palm of your hand.
The deployment unit is called the platform. Each platform consists of 3,500 servers in 12 chassis, housed in 4 racks, plus one rack with transformers that convert 3-phase current into the 48-volt 2-phase current required to power equipment. Blades are inserted into the chassis, each of which contains 18 servers and a common data store for them.
80 servers in the platform are reserved for maintenance tasks. Also in the system there are a dozen regular x86 servers that also perform service tasks.
As such, virtualization in the system is not provided, users are encouraged to rent an array of bare metal servers. This solution is suitable for projects that support horizontal scaling, but not applicable for applications that require vertical scaling.
There is no possibility to order the service yet, the prices for it are also not voiced, but you can play for free 15 minutes with the server on the developer’s website (if you have time to grab it free, of course, because there are clearly more people willing to play than the available servers).
And there will be no completion yet, because this is all - only the beginning.
The ecosystem of ARM servers is still young. Almost every article about it necessarily contains at least one paragraph describing the advantages of architecture over x86. Be sure to talk about lower power consumption, often also mention the convenience of building specialized solutions, adapted for high performance on certain tasks. Details about the advantages and disadvantages of the ARM architecture, we wrote earlier in our blog. And in this post we will talk about real examples of its practical implementation by both equipment manufacturers and service providers.
')
AMD fights for palm
After only 2 days after the previous publication, AMD opened the sale of its test platforms for developers based on 64-bit ARM processors AMD Opteron A1100. Line specifications:
- 4 or 8 cores ARM Cortex-A57
- Up to 4 MB of shared L2 and 8 MB of shared L3 cache
- Customizable dual channels of DDR3 or DDR4 memory with ECC and performance up to 1866 MT / second
- Up to 4 SODIMM, UDIMM or RDIMM
- 8 PCI-Express Gen 3 I / O slots
- 8 Serial ATA 3 ports
- 2 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports
- ARM TrustZone technology for enhanced security
- Coprocessors for cryptography and data compression
Together with the platform comes a special build of Linux, compiled under the architecture. A lot of standard software is already compiled / modified under ARM. Software and hardware developers are created all the conditions for the adaptation and debugging of their developments in the new environment. If you also feel the need for a test environment, or you just got an itch in your hands and free $ 3000, you can order a platform for developers on the AMD website .
In the future, AMD plans to develop a conceptual architecture of socket-compatible platforms, in which a SoC (System-on-Chip, system on a chip) based on x86 and ARM would be interchangeable, and based on which other manufacturers of server platforms could create universal solutions. The chips will have similar cores for I / O, memory and graphics. This project was named SkyBridge. In 2015, the company plans to complete the development of a basic architecture and demonstrate the first turnkey solutions that work on its basis. However, it has not yet been reported whether the iron producers themselves are interested in such solutions, therefore at this stage the idea may seem dubious.
AMD was and still is Intel’s main competitor in the x86 computer processor market, and Intel is gradually pushing the company out of this market. According to some data in recent years, AMD’s market share has declined from approximately 40% to 25% in the user segment and from approximately 15% to 2-3% in the server segment. Apparently, it is precisely this fact that caused such a keen interest in the emerging market of ARM. Accumulated over the years, knowledge and developments according to experts should help AMD in the active and serious market conquest. But here competitors gradually appear.
Applied Micro comes on the heels
At the end of May, Applied Micro Circuits together with Canonical (a company that supports the development of Ubuntu) demonstrated the work of software deployed on a platform based on 64-bit ARM. The demonstration used the latest release of OpenStack, which used Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in the virtual KVM environment. Deploy was produced on a server based on SoC X-Gene. Companies have demonstrated the work of applications such as Elasticsearch, SugarCRM, Kibana, Logstash, Hadoop and MediaWiki.
Just the other day, Applied Micro also released its X-C1 platform for developers and set a nice promotional price on it, which makes it much more affordable than AMD. The platform is available in two variations: Basic and Plus. Variations of processor performance, initial memory, and the number of SATA ports differ (for Basic, it seems, only one). Plus version also comes with a desktop mini-ATX chassis, and Basic comes only with a power supply. More details can be found on the company's website . The total price of the platforms is $ 1,495 for Basic and $ 2,495 for Plus, however developers have a chance to get special prices: $ 895 and $ 1395, respectively. To do this, you must fill out a form on the company's website, after which she will decide whether to give you a discount or not.
Shelf arrives
Recently, the semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm, which dominates the chip market for smartphones, announced its ambitions to bite off a piece of cake from the server market. So far this is only a declaration of intent, but the company, apparently, is serious. It is not yet known how deeply they will be able to penetrate the specifics of the server market, but this is in any case a good sign and “plus in karma” for ARM.
The first market swallows
The specificity of the ARM architecture facilitates the development of solutions tailored for specific tasks. And if the announcements of new x86 platforms usually look like this: “our solution will move mountains and tidy up in the August stables”, then the announcements of commercial ARM platforms I have met are usually more substantive: “our solution is adapted to ...”
... for web caching
HP was the first to introduce its servers on the market. More precisely, these are not standalone servers, but cartridges for the Moonshot platform developed by the company. This compact system holds up to 45 cartridges and is made in the 4.3 U form factor, which allows you to place 10 such systems in a rack. Thus, up to 1800 server cartridges can fit in one rack! Read more about Moonshot on the HP website .
All HP cartridges are individually tailored. The m400 is based on the already known 64-bit 8-core chip from Applied Micro X-Gene, which has a clock frequency of 2.4GHz. The cartridge is set to 64GB of RAM, optionally an 120GB, 240GB or 480GB SSD disk can be installed.
Each SoC is equipped with a 10 Gbps network interface. The cartridge consumes up to 75 W at peak load and about 42 W in standby mode. Particular attention in developing the system was paid to working with memory, so it would be an ideal option for working with caching applications like mamcached. The cost of a chassis with 15 cartridges, a switch and 3 power supplies starts at $ 58,000.
... for digital processing
m800, another cartridge from HP, created in conjunction with other professionals in their field. Texas Instruments, specializing in digital signal processing (DSP) solutions, developed a 32-bit ARM processor with a clock speed of 1.0 GHz, containing 4 processor cores and 8 DSP cores. Each cartridge comes with four such processors, 8-32GB of RAM, a 32 or 64GB SSD, and gigabit network interfaces (1 dual channel interface per processor). All the SoCs within the cartridge are interconnected, which allows them to “share” the memory and the data stored in it.
The advantages of this system are not so much in computer as in DSP cores. Thanks to them, the platform is suitable for such tasks as video processing and encoding, analysis of audio and other digital data in real time. According to the vice-president of the project Moonshot, servers based on this type of cartridges use Paypal for rapid data analysis.
Each cartridge consumes up to 87 watts under full load and 48 watts when idle. For the chassis with 15 cartridges, equipped with 32-gigabyte drives, a switch and 4 power supplies will have to pay from $ 82,000.
... under data storage
Actually, the development of Dell still can not be called commercial, although I would love to. In its best traditions, when the rest are already selling, Dell still pulls the cat for all the details, modifies, tests and walks through the presentations:
There is no particularly detailed information about the new platform, but it is known (mainly from the same presentation) that the storage servers are based on the 64-bit ARM X-Gene processor created by Applied Micro and can fit 12 disks in a 1U chassis.
And Microsoft there too
According to unofficial data, Microsoft is testing a special build of Windows Server, adapted to work with the ARM architecture. The announcement of this, published in Bloomberg Businessweek , is filled with so many conspiracies that it’s hard to understand whether Microsoft really deliberately hides the availability of a test version of its ARM-based OS, or is it just such a marketing move to get attention. However, the fact remains: if Microsoft creates an ARM version of Windows that is fully compatible with all existing applications, this can give a powerful impetus to the development of not only the server, but also the user segment.
Cloud on ARM
Hosting division of a major French provider decided to build a cloud on their own. Moreover, it was decided to abandon popular solutions like OpenStack and do everything on their own from scratch, starting with hardware design and ending with software development, which took 2.5 years of work. The servers used in the system are based on a 32-bit 4-core Marvell ARMv7 chip, each one has 2GB of RAM, and each individual server can easily fit in the palm of your hand.
The deployment unit is called the platform. Each platform consists of 3,500 servers in 12 chassis, housed in 4 racks, plus one rack with transformers that convert 3-phase current into the 48-volt 2-phase current required to power equipment. Blades are inserted into the chassis, each of which contains 18 servers and a common data store for them.
80 servers in the platform are reserved for maintenance tasks. Also in the system there are a dozen regular x86 servers that also perform service tasks.
As such, virtualization in the system is not provided, users are encouraged to rent an array of bare metal servers. This solution is suitable for projects that support horizontal scaling, but not applicable for applications that require vertical scaling.
There is no possibility to order the service yet, the prices for it are also not voiced, but you can play for free 15 minutes with the server on the developer’s website (if you have time to grab it free, of course, because there are clearly more people willing to play than the available servers).
And at the end
And there will be no completion yet, because this is all - only the beginning.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/244363/
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