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Tag: ARM architecture

  • OCZ samples twin-core ARM SSD controller • The Register

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    OCZ says it is available for evaluation now by OEMs and, we presume, OCZ will be using it in its own flash products. Were looking at 1TB SSDs using TLC flash, shipping sequential data out at 500MB/sec which boot quickly, and could be combined to provide multi-TB flash data stores. Parallelising data access would provide multi-GB/sec I/O. The flash future looks bright.

    via OCZ samples twin-core ARM SSD controller • The Register.

    Who knew pairing an ARM core with the drive electronics for a Flash based SSD could be so successful. Not only are the ARM chips helping to drive the cpus on our handheld devices, they are now becoming the SSD Drive controllers too! If OCZ is able to create these drive controllers with good yields (say 70% on the first run) then they are going to hopefully give themselves a pricing advantage and get a higher profit margin per device sold. This is assuming they don’t have to pay royalties for the SandForce drive controller on every device they ship.

    If OCZ was able to draw up their own drive controller, I would be surprised. However, since they have acquired Indilinx it seems like they are making good on the promise held by Indilinx’s current crop of drive controllers. Let’s just hope they are able to match the performance of SandForce at the same price points as well. Otherwise it’s nothing more than a kind of patent machine that will allow OCZ to wage lawsuits against competitors for Intellectual Property they acquired through the acquisition of Indilinx. And we have seen too much of that recently with Apple’s secret bid for Nortel’s patent pool and Google’s acquisition of Motorola.

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

    Image representing SeaMicro as depicted in Cru...
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    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.

  • ARM daddy simulates human brain with million-chip super • The Register

    British Scientist, nominated for the Millenniu...
    Steve Furber (Image via Wikipedia)

    While everyone in the IT racket is trying to figure out how many Intel Xeon and Atom chips can be replaced by ARM processors, Steve Furber, the main designer of the 32-bit ARM RISC processor at Acorn in the 1980s and now the ICL professor of engineering at the University of Manchester, is asking a different question, and that is: how many neurons can an ARM chip simulate?

    via ARM daddy simulates human brain with million-chip super • The Register.

    The phrase reminds me a bit of an old TV commercial that would air during the Saturday cartoons. Tootsie Roll brand lollipops had a center made out of Tootsie Roll. The challenge was to determine how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop? The answer was, “The World May Never Know”. And so it goes for the simulations large scale and otherwise of the human brain.

    I remember also reading Stewart Brand’s 1985 book about the MIT Media Lab and their installation of a brand new multi-processor super computer called The Connection Machine (TCM). Danny Hillis was the designer and author of the original concept of stringing together a series of small one bit computer cores to act like ‘neurons’ in a larger array of cpus. The scale was designed to top out at around 65,535 (2^16). At the time MIT Media Lab only had the machine filled up 1/4 of the way but was attempting to do useful work with it at that size. Hillis spun out of MIT to create a startup company called Thinking Machines (to reflect the neuron style architecture he had pursued as a grad student). In fact all of Hillis’s ideas stemmed from his research that led up to the original Connection Machine Mark. 1.

    Spring forward to today and the sudden appearance of massively parallel, low-power servers like Calxeda using ARM chips, Qanta Sq-2 using Tilera chips (also an MIT spin out). Similarly the Seamicro SM-10000×64 which uses Intel Atom chips in large scale, large quantity. And Seamicro is making sales TODAY. It almost seems like a stereotypical case of an idea being way ahead of its time. So recognize the opportunity because now the person directly responsible for designing the ARM chip is attacking that same problem Danny Hillis was all those years ago.

    Personally I would like to see Hillis join in some way with this program not as Principal Investigator but may a background consultant. Nothing wrong with a few more eyes on the preliminary designs. Especially with Hillis’s background in programming those old mega-scale computers. That is the true black art of trying to do a brain simulator on this scale. Steve Furber might just be able to make lightning strike twice (once for Acorn/ARM cpus and once more for simulating the brain in silicon).

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  • Calxeda boasts of 5 watt ARM server node • The Register

    Calxeda is not going to make and sell servers, but rather make chips and reference machines that it hopes other server makers will pick up and sell in their product lines. The company hopes to start sampling its first ARM chips and reference servers later this year. The first reference machine has 120 server nodes in a 2U rack-mounted format, and the fabric linking the nodes together internally can be extended to interconnect multiple enclosures together.

    via Calxeda boasts of 5 watt ARM server node • The Register.

    SeaMicro and now Calxeda are going gangbusters for the ultra dense low power server market. Unlike SeaMicro, Calxeda wants to create reference designs it licenses to manufacturers who will build machines with 120 cores in a 2 Unit rack. SeaMicro’s record right now is 512 cores per 10U rack  or roughly 102+ cores in a 2 Unit rack. The difference is the SeaMicro product uses an Intel low power Atom cpu,  whereas Calxeda is using a processor used more often in smart phones and tablet computers. SeaMicro has hinted they are not wedded to the Intel Architecture, but they are more interested in shipping real live product than coming up with generic designs others can license. In the long run it’s entirely possible SeaMicro may switch to a different CPU, they have indicated previously they have designed their servers with flexibility enough to swap out the processor to any other CPU if necessary. It would be really cool to see an apples-to-apples comparison of a SeaMicro server using first Intel CPUs versus ARM-based CPUs.

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  • IBM Teams Up With ARM for 14-nm Processing

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    Big, Little & Little-est!

    Monday IBM announced a partnership with UK chip developer ARM to develop 14-nm chip processing technology. The news confirms the continuation of an alliance between both parties that launched back in 2008 with an overall goal to refine SoC density, routability, manufacturability, power consumption and performance.

    via IBM Teams Up With ARM for 14-nm Processing.

    Interesting that IBM is striking out so far away from the current state of the art processing node for silicon chips. 22nm or there abouts is the what most producers of flash memory are targeting for their next generation product. Smaller sizes mean more chips per wafer, higher density means storage sizes go up for both flash drives and SSDs without increasing in physical size (who wants to use brick sized external SSDs right?). Too, it is interesting that ARM is the partner with IBM for their farthest target yet in chip production design rule sizes. But it appears that System-on-Chip (SoC) designers like ARM are now state of the art producers of power and waste heat optimized computing. Look at Apple’s custom A4 processor for the iPad and iPhone. That chip has lower power requirements than any other chip on the market. It is currently leading the pack for battery life in the iPad (10 hours!). So maybe it does make sense to choose ARM right now as they can benefit the most and the fastest from any shrink in the size of the wire traces used to create a microprocessor or a whole integrated system on a chip. Strength built on strength, that’s a winning combination and shows that IBM and ARM have an affinity for the lower power consumption future of cell phone and tablet computing.

    But consider this also, the last article I wrote about Tilera’s product plans regarding cloud computing in a box. ARM chips could easily be the basis for much lower power, much higher density computing clouds. Imagine a GooglePlex style datacenter running ARM CPUs on cookie trays instead of commodity Intel parts. That’s a lot of CPUs and a lot less power draw, both big pluses for a Google design team working on a new data center. True, legacy software concerns might over rule a switch to lower power parts. But if the cost of electricity would offset the opportunity cost of switching to a new CPU (an having to re-compile software for the new chip) then Google would be crazy not to seize up on this.

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