This post is more than 5 years old
31 Posts
0
2590
Virtualization for Intel Atom and ARM CPU?
HP’s Donatelli talked about new Intel Atom and ARM-based server and potential storage.
Any insight on what VMware/Virtualiztion can do these platforms?
AllThingsD: The big announcement today was about storage. What’s the important message on that subject from HP that you want people to take away today?
Donatelli: Well, I think the top-level message is that with converged infrastructure, which is a strategy that HP has outlined, we’re out to reinvent the entire infrastructure industry. We’ve made major changes in the network industry, and we’ve done that over time. We’ve made major changes in servers, as with our recent announcement that we’re going to build servers with Intel Atom and ARM-based chips. It’s a total reinvention of what servers do. And then with storage, we think we’re doing the same thing. Most people look at storage as a pyramid with different tiers and different ways they address those tiers. Our competitors address those tiers with product after product, and the result is that to customers it becomes really complex and frustrating. What we’re doing with both backup and primary storage is taking what used to require multiple products and instead delivering one single product. With primary storage it’s 3PAR, and for backup, it’s a product called StoreOnce.
http://allthingsd.com/20120605/seven-questions-for-hp-enterprise-chief-dave-donatelli/
wwn1
31 Posts
0
June 7th, 2012 07:00
I think the performance is more critical than compute density and heating density. In fact, SeaMicro already packs 768 Cores Into its Atom Server.
More details:
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/07/18/seamicro-packs-768-cores-into-its-atom-server/
reseach
225 Posts
0
June 6th, 2012 19:00
Let’s see how much improvement Atom/ARM can make on ratio of computing density / heating density. If either of them can’t do better than the current do, I do not think they could success.
reseach
225 Posts
0
June 7th, 2012 19:00
About this, I have some different thoughts. For now many DC stuffed from IT room environment management due to high heating density, which is caused by computing density and lead system to panic.
I love ATOM / ARM system, which has better processing efficiency benefiting from its pipe design, which also need support from app coding.
On your article, section “14 kilowatts per Rack”, it is always better than most of current x86 system.
wwn1
31 Posts
0
June 8th, 2012 11:00
No doubt, your input here is highly appreciated.
Back to the perfromance, I couldn't find any ATOM performance/benchmark testing result from Intel/SeaMicro.
The funny part is SeaMicro is a part of AMD now.
reseach
225 Posts
0
June 10th, 2012 18:00
Atom is X86 IA32 instruction Set, and ARM is RISC instruction Set. As this, I do not think either of them are good choice for ESX environment, To Atom, the IA32 does not support large enough RAM addressing, To ARM, will VM has new layer for X86<->RISC?
wwn1
31 Posts
1
June 12th, 2012 08:00
These are technical challenges needs to be conquered. We don't know if someone already worked on this front yet.
reseach
225 Posts
1
June 12th, 2012 18:00
Considering the performance of IA<->RISC, I do not tend to be a fan of using ARM/Atom in virtualization environment.
From my prospective, these would be good choice of application layer deployment, but that should be a full parallel system
wwn1
31 Posts
1
June 13th, 2012 06:00
I see your point for sure.
Whether or not virtualize ARM/ATOM platform will be highly depending on applications and use cases. From what I can imagine, I believe it is definitely needed on the mobile computing devices. So let's wait and see.