AMD To Provide 64-Bit ARM Opteron Processors for the Server Market

AMD announced it will design processors based on 64-bit ARM technology in addition to its x86 processors for the cloud and data center servers. AMD will be the first company to provide both x86 and ARM solutions to the server market, and the first ARM-based server CPU is scheduled for 2014. There aren’t much details at this time, but AMD did say it will be take advantage of AMD SeaMicro Freedom supercompute fabric in order to link CPU, Ethernet and Storage and the processor will be sold as an AMD Opteron CPU. Interestingly, the company does not plan to design 64-bit ARM processor for the client market (e.g. Windows RT) for the time being. Red Hat and AMD partnered for the server software, and Red Hat has started to work to bring support for the next generation of 64-bit ARM server processors to the Fedora Project include 64-bit ARM OpenJDK. […]

Codethink Launches The Baserock Slab ARM Server

Codethink has just announced an ARM based server called “The BaseRock Slab” powered by Marvell ARMADA XP quad core ARMv7-A processors with 2 GB RAM and 30GB (up to 120GB) mSATA SSD Storage per node, which targets applications such as cloud computing infrastructure and native ARM build and test. This 32 cores server comes in a 1U chassis (483mm x 44mm x 355m), is powered by a 260 PSU, integrates eight Cogent CSB1726-ArmadaXP SoM (Marvell Armada XP quad-core ARMv7-A CPUs, 1.33Ghz + 2 GB ECC DDR3 RAM) in to a carrier board featuring the following: 30GB (max 120GB) mSATA SSD, max 250MB/sec read/write, per SoM SATA port for additional dedicated storage, per SoM Dual 2.5Gbit/s full-duplex ethernet, trunkable into a single 5Gbit/s link Management SoM for remote power, fan and reset control Firmware upgrade via the network The server is managed by Cogent CSB1724 SoM powered by Marvell Armada 300 […]

ARM TechCon 2012: Software & System Design Schedule

ARM Technology Conference (TechCon) 2012 will take place on October 30 – November 1, 2011, in Santa Clara, and UBM Electronics has already posted the detailed schedule for the event. The first day (October 30) will be Chip Designs day  and the other 2 days will focus on Software & System Design. Even if, like me, you are not be able to go there, it’s still interesting to know what will be discussed at the conference, to have a better idea where ARM is going, and what new technologies and/or development techniques are (or will become) available. There will be around 70 sessions categorized in 15 tracks: Android / Open Source –  Development tools, middleware for native application development, and optimized drivers for Android, Linux, FreeRTOS etc … Compute Platforms – Development and implementation of standards and specifications, from board/module design to consumer and server designs Developing / Debugging – […]

Boston Ships Viridis ARM Server Based on Calxeda EnergyCore Cortex A9 SoC

At the end of 2011, Boston, a British IT company, announced plans for an ARM server based on Calxeda Quad Core Cortex A9 Server-on-Chip, and now the company recently announced they started to ship the server (called Viridis) to their first customers. We now have further details about the server including the key features: Ten times the performance at the same power in the same space Cut energy and space by 90% Easily scalable to thousands of nodes 48 SoC devices delivered across 12 Calxeda EnergyCard modules Each EnergyCore SoC contains an ARM quadcore processing unit, providing a total of 192 cores per 2U enclosure Low power consumption: <300W with each SoC consuming between 0.5 to 5W depending on the load. Up to 24 SATA HDDs or SSD devices Up to 192GB of RAM per 2U enclosure A Calxeda EnergyCard (pictured below) features 4 Calxeda EnergyCore ECX-1000 SoC which can […]

Monkey, an Open Source High Performance Embedded Web Server

Some time ago, I mentioned 5 web servers (mathopd, thttpd, busybox httpd, boa and lighttpd) suitable for embedded systems (including those featuring no MMU processors) and low end machines. I’ve recently come across Monkey web server, a lightweight open source Web Server for Linux (2.6.29 or greater), which has been designed with focus in embedded devices. Monkey is currently supported on ARM, x86 and x64, although a quick analysis of the source code shows it forks, so it won’t be supported on processors that do not feature a memory management unit (MMU) without modifications. Monkey supports the following features: HTTP/1.1 compliant Virtual Hosts Asynchronous networking model (event-driven) Indented configuration Plugins Support C API Interface Other features through base plugins: SSL Security Log writter Directory Listing Shell: Command line The developers have benchmarked Monkey against busybox httpd and nginx on a now well-know ARMv6 platform: the Raspberry Pi. They used Siege […]

Ubuntu 12.04 Server ARMHF Image for Mele A1000/A2000

I’ve seen quite a few people who want to use the Mele A1000 – or its brother the Mele A2000 – media player as a server (Sacrilege!). Since recent ARM servers are running Ubuntu 12.04, and Tom Gall has (conveniently) posted the live-build config necessary to generate Ubuntu 12.04 Server image this week, I thought I’d give it a try on Mele A1000. The image generated is a headless system running Apache 2 and sshd (openssh_server). I’ll detail the steps I followed to generate this image first, so if you just want to try the SD card image, scroll down at the end of the post. The first step is to generate Ubuntu Linaro Server rootfs, by following the Live-Build instructions on Linaro website together with Tom’s live build config. I’ve followed those steps in a machine running Ubuntu 12.04. Let’s install the required packages:

Configure the build and […]

Phoronix Designed a Solar Powered ARM Cluster with 48 Pandaboards

Michael Larabel of Phoronix did a “little” week-end project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), building an ARM cluster with 48 Pandaboards mostly with standard Pandaboards (OMAP 4430), although some Pandaboard ES (OMAP 4460) were also thrown in the mix. The 96-core cluster consumes just over 200 Watts under load and can be powered by a solar panel. The boards are stacked up vertically in an industrial trashcan, and are powered via USB instead of AC adapters. Michael’s PandaBoard ES testing indicates about a 3 Watt idle per board, 5 Watt under load, or 6 Watts under extreme load. The cluster idle power consumption is just under 170 Watts while idle, and goes slightly over 200 Watts under load. Each Pandaboard runs Ubuntu 12.04 ARM OMAP4 installed on SD cards. MIT did some testing and provided Phoronix with benchmark results such as tests following Green500 benchmarking procedure, but they are […]

ARM vs x86 Servers Benchmark – Calxeda EnergyCore ECX-1000 vs Intel Xeon E3-1240

Calxeda has released the results of ApacheBench benchmark comparing their ARM-based EnergyCore solution to an Intel Xeon server in order to showcase the performance and the much lower power consumption of their servers. Here’s the setup: Hardware: Single Calxeda EnergyCore ECX-1000 @ 1.1 GHz, 4 GB of DDR3L-1066 memory, 1Gb Ethernet network port and 250 GB SATA 7200rpm HDD Intel Xeon E3-1240 @ 3.3 GHz, 16 GB memory and 1Gb Ethernet network port. No info on hard drive provided Software: Ubuntu Server v12.04 Apache Server v2.4.2 ApacheBench v2.3 (16k request size) They performed power measurements every 2 seconds and averaged the results. Power supply overhead and hard drive power consumption were not excluded in the measurement, but the entire SoC and DDR memory power consumption were included together. For the Intel server however, they could not measure directly, so they used published TDP values for the CPU (80 W) and I/O […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC