SeaMicro pushes Atom smasher to 768 cores in 10U box • The Register

An original SM10000 server with 512 cores and 1TB of main memory cost $139,000. The bump up to the 64-bit Atom N570 for 512 cores and the same 1TB of memory boosted the price to $165,000. A 768-core, 1.5TB machine using the new 64HD cards will run you $237,000. Thats 50 per cent more oomph and memory for 43.6 per cent more money. ®

via SeaMicro pushes Atom smasher to 768 cores in 10U box • The Register.

SeaMicro continues to pump out the jams releasing another updated chassis in less than a year. There is now a grand total of 768 processor cores jammed in that 10U high box. Which leads me to believe they have just eclipsed the compute per rack unit of the Tilera and Calxeda massively parallel cloud servers in a box. But that would wrong because Calxeda is making a 2U server rack unit hold 120-4 core ARM cpus. So that gives you a grand total of 480 in just 2 rack units alone. Multiply that by 5 and you get 2400 cores in a 10U rack serving. So advantage Calxeda in total core count, however lets also consider software too. Atom being the cpu that Seamicro has chosen all along is an intel architecture chip and an x64 architecture at that. It is the best of both worlds for anyone who already had a big investment in Intel binary compatible OSes and applications. It is most often the software and it’s legacy pieces that drive the choice of which processor goes into your data cloud.

Anyone who had clean slate to start from might be able to choose between Calxeda versus Seamicro for their applications and infrastructure. And if density/thermal design point per rack unit is very important Calxeda too will suit your needs I would think. But who knows? Maybe your workflow isn’t as massively parallel as a Calxeda server and you might have a much lower implementation threshold getting started on an Intel system, so again advantage Seamicro. A real industry analyst would look at these two competing companies as complimentary, different architectures for different workflows.