Post by Admin on Apr 3, 2016 9:19:39 GMT -5
The Data Center has three aspects: raw computational ability of the CPUs and their cores, the interconnection of those CPUs and cores (scale-up and scale-out), and the orchestration of all those interconnections, which includes SDN and NFV virtualization of the overall environment.
Think about it this way. The data center is like a brain. The individual CPUs, and cores on the CPUs for that matter, need to be able to process at maximum efficiency (crunch the numbers rapidly and with minimum power dissipated per crunch - the brain uses 20% of the body's energy in humans). The CPUs (ARM processors) are like individual neurons. It doesn't matter how fast or efficient those processors are without fast and efficient interconnections between them. Hence announcements about PAM4 and NUMA, connecting everything together with efficient scale-up and scale-out interconnect schemes. The interconnections are the nerve and glial cells of the data center. Then there is some processing scheme. What will be done with all the information and when? What parts of the brain will light-up in the CAT scan when performing various tasks? The servers run on Linux and the data center itself runs on OpenDCRE (Open Data Center Run-time Environment), which enables SDN and NFV. The high-level software not being a place where AMCC can add a lot of value, they have gone with open source offerings from Cannonical and Vapor IO, likely modified by AMCC, but they wisely chose not to reinvent the wheel.
Many companies who have ARM processors do not have the interconnect technology (AMD and QCOM, maybe INTC?). CAVM has chosen to use a brute force approach with many "wimpy" cores, which probably gives them a niche market someplace in the data center (security? - don't count them out yet). Many others have a me too offering mainly for IoT, which might compete with Helix to some degree, but big questions remain if these chips could compete in the data center (TI, MRVL, AVGO, Freescale, etc.).
It seems like AMCC is the only manufacturer that sees the "big picture" in the data center in my humble opinion. It is also the only manufacturer that is bringing its core competency of telecom expertise to what was formerly the exclusive domain of data-com.
This could be very big.
Think about it this way. The data center is like a brain. The individual CPUs, and cores on the CPUs for that matter, need to be able to process at maximum efficiency (crunch the numbers rapidly and with minimum power dissipated per crunch - the brain uses 20% of the body's energy in humans). The CPUs (ARM processors) are like individual neurons. It doesn't matter how fast or efficient those processors are without fast and efficient interconnections between them. Hence announcements about PAM4 and NUMA, connecting everything together with efficient scale-up and scale-out interconnect schemes. The interconnections are the nerve and glial cells of the data center. Then there is some processing scheme. What will be done with all the information and when? What parts of the brain will light-up in the CAT scan when performing various tasks? The servers run on Linux and the data center itself runs on OpenDCRE (Open Data Center Run-time Environment), which enables SDN and NFV. The high-level software not being a place where AMCC can add a lot of value, they have gone with open source offerings from Cannonical and Vapor IO, likely modified by AMCC, but they wisely chose not to reinvent the wheel.
Many companies who have ARM processors do not have the interconnect technology (AMD and QCOM, maybe INTC?). CAVM has chosen to use a brute force approach with many "wimpy" cores, which probably gives them a niche market someplace in the data center (security? - don't count them out yet). Many others have a me too offering mainly for IoT, which might compete with Helix to some degree, but big questions remain if these chips could compete in the data center (TI, MRVL, AVGO, Freescale, etc.).
It seems like AMCC is the only manufacturer that sees the "big picture" in the data center in my humble opinion. It is also the only manufacturer that is bringing its core competency of telecom expertise to what was formerly the exclusive domain of data-com.
This could be very big.