Your Custom Text Here
One of my highest Google search traffic hits is to Marvell’s plug computer 3.0.
Some may be thinking what would I do with an ARM based server in the home?
To get you thinking watch this video of a Nokia ARM powered mobile connected to a LEGO built Rubik’s cube solver.
Nokia’s Symbian has just gone open source, so maybe it’s not too far out to think your mobile and home server having the same code base.
Slashgear has a post on Via’s home mini server.
VIA M’SERV S2100 home mini server arrives
By Chris Davies on Wednesday, Jan 13th 2010 1 Comment
One of the reasons we have a soft-spot for VIA is that they eat their own dogfood: not only do they produce processors, mainboards and other chipsets, they also put out a range of products (often to OEMs rather than end-users) that actually use them. Latest is the VIA M’SERV S2100, a boxy little server intended for home and small business users that’s powered by the VIA Nano CPU.
The M’SERV S2100 measures in at 10.2-inches long and 4.7-inches high, yet can be stuffed with up to 4TB of storage space. There’s also a 1.3+GHz VIA Nano CPU, two memory slots, two SATA bays and an internal Compact Flash socket which the S2100 can boot from. As for ports, you’re looking at dual gigabit ethernet, three USB 2.0 and a VGA output.
The Via product page has more details.
VIA M’SERV S2100 is a data-oriented 64-bit Mini Server with a large storage capacity, low power consumption and strong network connection. The M’SERV comes equipped with two Gigabit Ethernet that makes this unique mini server system a perfect fit not only for home download applications, but also as a small business/SOHO/personal server that provides ample storage space in an energy-efficient, compact, low-noise system.
64-bit Processor
Powered by the VIA Nano 64-bit processor, the M’SERV S2100 mini server is the first and smallest server to support a 64-bit environment. The VIA Nano processor also features hardware assisted virtualization technology, enabling users to experience improved performance across multiple virtual environments.
CF Socket
Built-in bootable Compact Flash socket is perfect for installing a slimmed-down version Windows or other embedded OS.
Dual Gigabit LAN
Two high-speed Ethernet ports on a speedy PCI Express bus for both Internet and intranet connections.
Low Noise
A quiet ball-bearing fan silently cools the system with noise levels remaining below a mere 26.8 dB.
Two RAM Sockets
Dual onboard DDR2 SO-DIMM sockets for convenient system upgrades.
Low Power
Based on a VIA processor and chipset combination, the M’SERV S2100 is an energy-efficient system with remarkably low power consumption.
Gizmodo.com has a post on Marvell Plug Computer 3.0.
Marvell Plug Computer 3.0: The Tiny Linux Brick
By Jesus Diaz, on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:59:25 –0
If I had $1,000,000 I would buy 10,000 of these Marvell Plug Computer 3.0, with a 2GHz Armada 300 CPU, Wi-Fi, and Linux 2.6, and build myself a supercomputer. It's either that or cocktails.
But, is this computer or what others would think of as a server? A server defined by Wikipedia is any combination of hardware or software designed to provide services to clients.
Marvell Unveils Plug Computer 3.0 With Integrated Wireless and Built-in Hard Drive
Powerful Microserver is bolstered with 2 GHz ARMADA Processor to drive the "Always-On Lifestyle"
A cooler picture of a plug computer 3.0 is on CES cnet live.
Marvell super-upgrades its Plug Computer
by Dong Ngo
The Plug Computer 3.0
(Credit: Marvell)
It's been just half a year since the first plug computer, the SheevaPlug, or the Plug Computer 1.0, was introduced, but Marvell is now ready to release the third generation of the product.
The company announced Tuesday at CES 2010 the Plug Computer 3.0, which it believes to be such an upgrade over the first one that it decided to designate it as the third (3.0) generation of the product, even though it's really the second.
The naming aside, the Plug Computer 3.0 seems indeed impressive. Sleek-looking and smaller than a deck of playing cards, the new mini computer is now much more powerful than the first generation. It's equipped with Marvell's brand-new ARMADA 300 processor, running at 2.0Ghz (as opposed to only 1.2Ghz of the Marvell Kirkwood processor that powers the SheevaPlug).
The new processor is also designed to use less energy and at the same time has better support for plug and play and streaming media. The Plug Computer 3.0 also offers many more options than the previous generation, including built-in storage and support for wireless networking and Bluetooth. And like the previous generation, it also has a built-in USB port and a Gigabit Ethernet port. The machine supports multiple standard Linux 2.6 kernel distributions, making it a great platform for application development.
Intel has been attention for the market needs for low power servers – little green servers. CNet news writes on a new ‘microserver’ standard Intel is proposing.
Intel seeks new 'microserver' standard
- Font size
- Share
- 2 comments
SAN FRANCISCO--In September, Intel introduced its back-to-the-future idea of tiny "microservers." Now the company wants to make the design into a standard others can use, too.
The chipmaker will offer its design specification to the Server System Infrastructure Forum by the end of the year, said Jason Waxman, general manager of Intel's high-density computing group. If the group's board votes its approval for the specification, group members may use the designs royalty-free, he said in a meeting with reporters here.
"Before the end of the year, it will happen," Waxman said.
An Intel 'microserver'
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)
The computer industry is in constant tension between proprietary designs and standards that anyone may use. The former can mean tidy profits for companies, as long as the technology is widely adopted, but the latter can spur broader adoption. Intel's primary business, selling processors, benefits more from the latter when it comes to cultivating a new server market segment.
What is inside the Intel’s offering?
What's inside?
The diminutive server consists of a single quad-core processor and four memory banks. Intel showed 16 microservers housed in an 8.75-inch-tall chassis that supplies them all with power, cooling, and a network connection to the outside world. Along the bottom of the chassis is a bay with 16 "sleds" that each has a trio of 2.5-inch hard drives that directly connect to each microserver.The present microserver uses a 1.86GHz quad-core processor, the "Lynnfield" model of Intel's new "Nehalem" generation. Its top power consumption is 45 watts, but early in 2010, Intel will release a dual-core "Clarkdale" model that consumes only 30 watts when running flat-out.
That's at the top end, though. Intel's goal is for the entire microserver--which also includes memory and supporting chips--to idle at just 25 watts of power.
An interesting part not discussed is how much is the microserver?
Sun employee Constantin Gonzalez Schmitz has post on his technical decisions for a Green OpenSolaris Home server. His requirements for ECC memory and power efficient make sense to have a reliable low power server.
A Small and Energy-Efficient OpenSolaris Home Server
In an earlier entry, I outlined my most important requirements for an optimal OpenSolaris Home Server. It should:
- Run OpenSolaris in order to fully leverage ZFS,
- Support ECC memory, so data is protected at all times,
- Be power-efficient, to help the environment and control costs,
- Use a moderate amount of space and be quiet, for some extra WAF points.
He admits his wife works for AMD, but qualifies his decision for AMD processor based on price, performance, and energy efficiency.
Disclosure: My wife works for AMD, so I may be slightly biased. But I think the following points are still very valid.
…
AMD on the other hand has a number of attractive points for the home server builder:
- AMD consumer CPUs use the same microarchitecture than their professional CPUs (currently, it's the K10 design). They only vary by number of cores, cache size, number of HT channels, TDP and frequency, which are all results of the manufacturing process. All other microarchitecture features are the same. When using an AMD consumer CPU, you essentially get a "smaller brother" of their high end CPUs.
- This means you'll also get a built-in memory-controller that supports ECC.
- This also means less chips to build a system (no Northbridge needed) and thus lower power-consumption.
- AMD has been using the HyperTransport Interconnect for quite a while now. This is a fast, scaleable interconnect technology that has been on the market for quite a while so chipsets are widely available, proven and low-cost.
So it was no suprise that even low-cost AMD motherboards at EUR 60 or below are perfectly capable of supporting ECC memory which gives you an important server feature at economic cost.
My platform conclusion: Due to ECC support, low power consumption and good HyperTransport performance at low cost, AMD is an excellent platform for building a home server.
To keep things small he uses 2.5” drives.
While looking for alternatives, I found a nice solution: The Scythe Slot Rafter fits into an unused PCI slot (taking up the breadth of two) and provides space for mounting four 2.5" disks at just EUR 5. These disks are cheap, good enough and I had an unused one lying around anyway, so that was a perfect solution for me.
And, being concerned about reliability adds a 2nd NIC.
Extra NIC: The Asus M3A78-CM comes with a Realtek NIC and some people complained about driver issues with OpenSolaris. So I followed the advice on the aforementioned Email thread and bought an Intel NIC which is well supported, just in case.
Constantin was able to achieve a 45W idle power consumption.
The Result
And now for the most important part: How much power does the system consume? I did some testing with one boot disk and 4GB of ECC RAM and measured about 45W idle. While stressing CPU cores, RAM and the disk with multiple instances of sysbench, I could not get the system to consume more than 80W. All in all, I'm very pleased with the numbers, which are about half of what my old system used to consume. I didn't do any detailed performance tests yet, but I can say that the system feels very responsive and compile runs just rush along the screen. CPU temperature won't go beyond the low 50Cs on a hot day, despite using the lowest fan speed, so cooling seems to work well, too.
It will be interesting to see what follow up posts Constantin writes.
