A finalist in the ARM Server competition, Samsung, huh?

I was with the family in Whole Food last night having everyone pick up their Valentine's day dessert.  Anything you want.  As I headed to the dessert area, I ran into an ARM expert I met 5 years ago who lives in the Seattle area.

One of the fun conversations we had 5 years ago 3 blocks from the Whole Food we were now standing in was how big the potential market is for ARM servers.  We need 64 bit and we need more SW.  Well 5 years later, 64 bit is around the corner and SW support is coming too.  But, something else showed up over the last 5 years.  Samsung.  25 years ago when I worked on display technologies for Apple, our monitors were made by Sony, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and Samsung.  I remember the Japanese guys saying how aggressive the Koreans were and how hard they work, just like Japan used to in the 70s.  Working with Samsung was great back then.  I tend to buy Samsung devices - TVs, Blu Ray, and Android Phones.  I would buy a Samsung refrigerator if they had a look that my wife liked.  And, wow what has Samsung achieved over the last 25 years.

My ARM friend and I usually run into each other at Intel Developer Forum which is funny given we live so close to each other, and him being an ARM guy we chat at IDF.  Seeing my ARM friend/expert in Whole Food was convenient as I have been meaning to chat with him and Sept 2013 IDF was too far out in time.  We reminisced about our discussions on ARM servers and we were right.  He was right saying it would be big inside ARM and the support has come.  The new thing we talked about is how big Samsung is going to be the ARM Server market.  

When I was down at the Open Compute Summit I was able to catch up with a bunch of industry people and they confirmed Samsung has been hiring server guys, and the Samsung IO chips are being worked on.  Take a look at the Samsung Galaxy phones, throw out the display, put some kick ass IO on it and you have an ARM server that will be tough to beat.

There will be a dozen companies with ARM servers over the next 2 years, and over time, within 5 years there will be 3-5 players dominating the market.  Samsung will be one of the players.  Intel will have some market.  Who will be the others?  Hard to guess 5 years out.

One way to tame those low utilization energy wasting server cpus, switch to ARM

Seems like this is the time to pick on the energy waste in data centers.  Wired has a post on the waste from servers.

Data Center Servers Suck — But Nobody Knows How Much

• BY ROBERT MCMILLANEMAIL AUTHOR
• 10.08.12
• 6:30 AM

Mozilla’s servers average around 6 percent CPU utilization, but maybe that’s OK. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

If the computer industry’s dirty little secret is that data centers are woefully inefficient, the secret behind the secret is that nobody knows how bad things really are.

On its surface, the issue is simple. Inside the massive data centers that drive today’s businesses, technical staffers have a tendency to just throw extra servers at a computing problem. They hope that by piling on the processors, they can keep things from grinding to a halt — and not get fired. But they don’t think much about how efficient those servers are.

Mozilla is quoted as pointing out the low cpu utilization is what comes with the territory, and they have a much higher utilization of RAM and network.

Over at Mozilla, Datacenter Operations Manager Derek Moore says he probably averages around 6 to 10 percent CPU utilization from his server processors, but he doesn’t see that as a problem because he cares about memory and networking. “The majority of our applications are RAM or storage constrained, not CPU. It doesn’t really bother us if the CPU is idle, as long as the RAM, storage, or network IO [input-output] is being well-utilized,” he says. “CPU isn’t the only resource when it comes to determining the effectiveness of a server.”

One way to make this problem go away is to use a cpu that uses a lot less power.  an ARM processor.  HP thinks ARMs will be 15% of the server market in 2 years. ?

HP Believes ARM Will Conquer 15% of the Server Market in Two Years

Adjust text size:     The world’s largest PC manufacturer, American company HP is also one of the largest server makers in the IT world. The company is working with Calxeda to build ARM servers, but it has strangely introduced Atom micro-servers first.

Why Dell made a smart move with its ARM Servers, providing a Hosting Service

I've been blogging about ARM in servers for quite a while and have had many conversations with people who think there is a market for little green servers.

Dell announced its ARM Server last week.  The one part that I kept on focusing on is the way Dell is delivering, well not delivering the ARM Servers.

Enabling other customers and developers by providing remote-accessible Copper ARM server clusters deployed in Dell Solution Centers, and through our deep partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). These clusters will be in place by the end of the year.

Not only does this provide a low cost way to increase the availability of Dell ARM servers, it provides data to Dell on what customers are doing.

A handful of people are getting ARM servers, and I am sure we won't hear anything from these uses for quite a while.  But, it is a safe bet there is an overlap with the Seamicro customer base.

• Shipping the new Dell “Copper” ARM server through a seed unit program to a select list of customers worldwide. There is no general availability at this time.
• Delivering Copper seed units to key ecosystem partners to support their development activities.

Here is a video to watch on the server.

The Dell ARM web site is here for more info.

Dell drives innovation for the ARM server ecosystem

Enterprises that run large web, cloud and big data environments are constantly seeking new technology to gain competitive advantage and reduce operations cost. This focus is motivating a dramatic interest in ARM-based server technologies as a way to meet these requirements. What is ARM? An advanced RISC machine (ARM) server employs small, low-power ARM processors, typically deployed as systems on a chip (SoC) to reduce space, power consumption and cost. ARM processors are present in billions of client devices, but they have not been previously adopted for use in servers, due to the feature set, performance and limited software ecosystem.  Moving ARM to the forefront Now that the processors have grown in capability, and the basic open source software is available, both customers and developers are anxious to test ARM servers to confirm the potential benefits within real-world environments. In response to customer demand, Dell has decided to enable the Dell “Copper” ARM-based server ecosystems, by: Shipping Dell "Copper" ARM servers to a select list of customers and partners, as part of a worldwide seed program. Systems have already begun shipping, but there is no general availability of the Dell "Copper" servers at this time. Enabling developers worldwide through remote-accessible Dell "Copper" ARM server clusters, in Dell Solution Centers and through our close partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC – UT). Delivering Dell ARM-supported solutions to the open source community, such as Crowbar on ARM and Crowbar for Hadoopon ARM.
		Dell "Copper" ARM server chassis and sleds
		Dell "Copper" ARM server sled

AMD buys SeaMicro, SeaMicro CEO heads up AMD's GM of Data Center Server Solutions

SeaMicro has a press release that AMD has acquired SeaMicro.

AMD to Acquire SeaMicro: Accelerates Disruptive Server Strategy

— SeaMicro’s Low-Power, High-Bandwidth Microserver Solutions Set the Stage for AMD’s Disruptive Approach To Lead Fast-Growing Cloud Data Center Market

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Feb. 29, 2012 – AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SeaMicro, a pioneer in energy-efficient, high-bandwidth microservers, for approximately $334 million, of which approximately $281 million will be paid in cash. Through the acquisition of SeaMicro, AMD will be accelerating its strategy to deliver disruptive server technology to its OEM customers serving Cloud-centric data centers. With SeaMicro’s fabric technology and system-level design capabilities, AMD will be uniquely positioned to offer industry-leading server building blocks tuned for the fastest-growing workloads such as dynamic web content, social networking, search and video.

It's kind of funny to think of AMD selling Intel processors, until 2nd half of 2012

AMD’s server technology combined with SeaMicro technology provides customers with a range of processor choices and platforms that can help significantly reduce data center complexity, cost and energy consumption while improving performance.  AMD plans to offer the first AMD Opteron™ processor-based solutions that combine AMD and SeaMicro technology in the second half of 2012.  The company remains firmly committed to its traditional server business, and will continue to focus and invest in this area.

“By acquiring SeaMicro, we are accelerating AMD’s transformation into an agile, disruptive innovator capable of staking a data center leadership position,” said Rory Read, president and CEO, AMD.  “SeaMicro is a pioneer in low-power server technology.  The unmatched combination of AMD’s processing capabilities, SeaMicro’s system and fabric technology, and our ambidextrous technology approach uniquely positions AMD with a compelling, differentiated position to attack the fastest growing segment of the server market.”

The SeaMicro of CEO has a new job.

“Cloud computing has brought a sea change to the data center -- dramatically altering the economics of compute by changing the workload and optimal characteristics of a server,” said Andrew Feldman, SeaMicro CEO, who will become general manager of AMD’s newly created Data Center Server Solutions business. “SeaMicro was founded to dramatically reduce the power consumed by servers, while increasing compute density and bandwidth.  By becoming a part of AMD, we will have access to new markets, resources, technology, and scale that will provide us with the opportunity to work tightly with our OEM partners as we fundamentally change the server market.”

Will Seamicro win the battle to obsolete the dual proc server? 64 Xeon processors in latest Server

I've been writing on the topic of little green servers for a while and discussed the idea of Intel Atoms and ARM processors in servers years ago.

SeaMicro announced its latest servers using the Intel Xeon E3-1260L which now supports a higher compute and memory capacity per core.  The press announcement had SeaMicro, Intel,and Samsung discussing the announcement.

SeaMicro Extends the Benefits of Micro Servers to All Segments of the Scale Out Data Center Market in Collaboration with Intel and Samsung Semiconductor

SAN FRANCISCO, January 31, 2012  – SeaMicro™, in cooperation with Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) and Samsung Semiconductor, Inc., today announced the widespread availability of the first fabric-based Intel® Xeon® micro server, the SeaMicro SM10000-XE™. The addition of the quad-core Intel® Xeon®-based SM10000-XE to the SM10000™ family makes SeaMicro the first and only company able to bring the massive benefits of micro servers to all segments of the scale out data center market.

But, if you have 64 Xeon's in a box is this really a micro server?  To give you a different perspective let's look at the back of the latest SeaMicro server.

Up to 16 10Gbe connections, above is 8 10Gbe and 24 1Gbe.  This is not good for some one who lives on the quantity and complexity of network ports.

If you have high costs for rack and stack, network support, then a SeaMicro box becomes more appealing.

"We are a trusted partner in the US intelligence community,” said Chad Wagner, president of CompSec.  “We have worked with our customers to deploy both SeaMicro’s Atom™-based and Xeon®-based systems.  The exceptional compute density and low power draw have made them the right choice for mission critical applications.  Our intelligence community customers have also found success using SeaMicro’s Freedom Supercompute Fabric to deliver huge amounts of compute power to remote and hard-to-access locations.  This greatly reduces response times, provides faster and more in-depth analysis, and helps to advance their mission.”