Post by Admin on Mar 28, 2016 14:21:00 GMT -5
www.nextplatform.com/2016/03/17/telcos-call-arm-compete-compute/
"The interesting bit in the X86 versus ARM pushing contest is a new sled that Kontron has cooked up that has both Intel’s Xeon D and Applied Micro’s X-Gene 1 processors as options. The new Symkloud boards include support for the four-core D-1527 (2.2 GHz), the eight-core D-1548 (2 GHz), and the 16-core D-1577 (1.3 GHz) and D-1581 (1.9 GHz). (You can see the new Xeon D lineup here. The Xeon D processor has a pair of 10 Gb/sec Ethernet port embedded in it, which greatly simplifies the infrastructure, although not everyone is using that port. (Facebook is not with its “Yosemite” server design, for instance, which is based on the Xeon D, instead has a two-port 50 Gb/sec adapter from Mellanox Technologies with cable splitters to provide 25 Gb/sec out of the four node server chassis in a virtual and shared fashion.) The Xeon D can support up to 128 GB of memory in its four sockets, but using cheap 8 GB sticks that telcos will like it tops out at 32 GB of memory. The top-end Xeon D-1581 has a 65 watt TDP.
Kontron has also created a two-node server sled for the Symkloud that has a pair of eight-core X-Gene 1 processors, which clock at 2.4 GHz, from Applied Micro. Each X-Gene 1 has a pair of 10 Gb/sec adapters on the die and support for 64 GB of memory across its two memory slots, and comes in at 47 watts.
So how do these two chips stack up on network function virtualization workloads when you pit a pair of X-Gene 1s, with a total of 16 cores per sled and four Ethernet ports, against a single Xeon D, with 16 cores and two Ethernet ports? Based on what Kontron has seen in early adopter customers, the two sleds are “similar in performance,” according to Freudenfeld, with the biggest differences higher network connectivity across the same number of cores and lower cost. With the top-speed Xeon D processors plus memory and storage, the sleds cost maybe $4,500 to $6,000 a pop, while with the X-Gene 1 sled costs maybe $4,000 to $5,000 each, according to Freudenfeld. That’s an 11 percent to 17 percent savings on raw hardware, roughly.
(Of course, we realize that it would be possible to put two Xeon D chips with 2 GHz clock speeds and on a sled and draw parity in terms of networking, dropping it down to 45 watts per chip and bringing the networking and cores to parity. Perhaps the performance – we can’t say.)
The important thing for telcos is that the Linux ecosystem is evolving for X-Gene and other ARM processors, and in the case of X-Gene 1, the same OpenStack cloud controller that runs on the Xeons can run on the X-Gene nodes. The Intel Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) can do deep packet inspection for networks, and the combination of the Enea Linux stack and the ixEngine from Qosmos can do deep packet inspection on the ARM chips. Benchmark stats were not revealed for these workloads, but the implication is that they are equivalent. As usual, our advice is to do your own tests and keep an eye on public benchmarks as they become available. The data is still particularly thin out there on ARM servers at the moment.
Looking ahead, Freudenfeld saus that Kontron is skipping the X-Gene 2 generation, which offered some tweaks to the eight-core design plus the addition of RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) on the Ethernet ports, and jumping straight to the X-Gene 3 that will start sampling later this year and perhaps be shipping early next year. At that time, Applied Micro will reach core parity with the Xeon Ds, and more direct comparisons can be made – and will be made – by the telcos and service providers."
"The interesting bit in the X86 versus ARM pushing contest is a new sled that Kontron has cooked up that has both Intel’s Xeon D and Applied Micro’s X-Gene 1 processors as options. The new Symkloud boards include support for the four-core D-1527 (2.2 GHz), the eight-core D-1548 (2 GHz), and the 16-core D-1577 (1.3 GHz) and D-1581 (1.9 GHz). (You can see the new Xeon D lineup here. The Xeon D processor has a pair of 10 Gb/sec Ethernet port embedded in it, which greatly simplifies the infrastructure, although not everyone is using that port. (Facebook is not with its “Yosemite” server design, for instance, which is based on the Xeon D, instead has a two-port 50 Gb/sec adapter from Mellanox Technologies with cable splitters to provide 25 Gb/sec out of the four node server chassis in a virtual and shared fashion.) The Xeon D can support up to 128 GB of memory in its four sockets, but using cheap 8 GB sticks that telcos will like it tops out at 32 GB of memory. The top-end Xeon D-1581 has a 65 watt TDP.
Kontron has also created a two-node server sled for the Symkloud that has a pair of eight-core X-Gene 1 processors, which clock at 2.4 GHz, from Applied Micro. Each X-Gene 1 has a pair of 10 Gb/sec adapters on the die and support for 64 GB of memory across its two memory slots, and comes in at 47 watts.
So how do these two chips stack up on network function virtualization workloads when you pit a pair of X-Gene 1s, with a total of 16 cores per sled and four Ethernet ports, against a single Xeon D, with 16 cores and two Ethernet ports? Based on what Kontron has seen in early adopter customers, the two sleds are “similar in performance,” according to Freudenfeld, with the biggest differences higher network connectivity across the same number of cores and lower cost. With the top-speed Xeon D processors plus memory and storage, the sleds cost maybe $4,500 to $6,000 a pop, while with the X-Gene 1 sled costs maybe $4,000 to $5,000 each, according to Freudenfeld. That’s an 11 percent to 17 percent savings on raw hardware, roughly.
(Of course, we realize that it would be possible to put two Xeon D chips with 2 GHz clock speeds and on a sled and draw parity in terms of networking, dropping it down to 45 watts per chip and bringing the networking and cores to parity. Perhaps the performance – we can’t say.)
The important thing for telcos is that the Linux ecosystem is evolving for X-Gene and other ARM processors, and in the case of X-Gene 1, the same OpenStack cloud controller that runs on the Xeons can run on the X-Gene nodes. The Intel Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK) can do deep packet inspection for networks, and the combination of the Enea Linux stack and the ixEngine from Qosmos can do deep packet inspection on the ARM chips. Benchmark stats were not revealed for these workloads, but the implication is that they are equivalent. As usual, our advice is to do your own tests and keep an eye on public benchmarks as they become available. The data is still particularly thin out there on ARM servers at the moment.
Looking ahead, Freudenfeld saus that Kontron is skipping the X-Gene 2 generation, which offered some tweaks to the eight-core design plus the addition of RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) on the Ethernet ports, and jumping straight to the X-Gene 3 that will start sampling later this year and perhaps be shipping early next year. At that time, Applied Micro will reach core parity with the Xeon Ds, and more direct comparisons can be made – and will be made – by the telcos and service providers."
