Re:Cavium Is an Arm Server Contender
by readittwice on Tuesday November 28, 2017 @03:32AM
(#15795399)
I am not sure if you have seen this review from Qualcomm's Centriq by Cloudflare, but at least for others it might be interesting: https://blog.cloudflare.com/arm-takes-wing/
In the conclusion they mention: "The largest win by far for Falkor is the low power consumption." (Falkor is the name of Qualcomm's Core).
Not to mention the amount of hardware standardization that still needs to happen. Having a different image for each manufacturer's hardware is going to get real old, real fast.
5+ years on, ARM on anywhere but mobile seems like a dud.
You don't need a different image for different manufacturers' platforms. One Linux image works across vendors. The standardisation effort started some years ago resulting in SBSA/SBBR, which allows a common image to be used.
I really want to see someone attempt an Android Treble-like project for ARM Linux distros.
I just wrote a Device Tree Overlay for a Real Time Clock module on FreeBSD RPI3. There is something to be said for PNP hardware.
Who would imagine that the computer industry would go so far back in time as to leave off the RTC.
Oh but wait they added Bluetooth and Wifi. Yet no system time. Still waiting for a PCIe bus as well... Guess I need some more of that koolaide they are drinking.
> Still waiting for a PCIe bus as well
RPI3 is not a 'server grade' ARM -
See e.g. the AMD 'Opteron A' boards:
http://www.lenovator.com/product/103.html#params
CPU Quad-core ARM Cortex-A57 64 bit
DRAM Two DDR3 SO-DIMM sockets
SATA Two SATA ports
USB Two USB 3.0 ports
Console USB-micro port for console support
Ethernet 1 GBe Ethernet
PCIe x16 PCIe G3 slot
Not all workloads require powerful CPU's: there are plenty of servers that are bandwith-limited (either network or I/O), like static webserving or mail-relay, and plenty workloads where performance is of secondary concern (like out-of-band batch processing, backup systems).
The X-Gene was complete crap in terms of both performance and power consumption. The ThunderX was only really useful for highly-parallel applications that don't require a lot of horsepower, and even then it's a power hog.
I'm cautiously optimistic with Qualcomm's Centriq and Cavium's ThunderX2, but unless they can make a compelling argument in terms of power consumption, I'm skeptical of them making any inroads into the market. Sure, Intel Xeons and IBM Power8s may suck power, but they're _damn_ fast, so you can execute your workloads quickly and then just shut the machine down or enter idle power states.