Sign in / up

back to article Quanta crams 512 cores into pizza box server

Quanta Computer – the Chinese manufacturer that builds the majority of laptops in the world and that wants to break into the server racket in a big way – has started shipping its first production machine based on massively multicored processors designed and manufactured by chip upstart Tilera. The Quanta machine, known as the …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    MIPS eh?

    I wonder how closely related these are to the Loongson systems that I've been assisting supporting in Gentoo.

    Sound like an awesome piece of kit. Doubt they'll be in my price range though.

    (Posting this on a Yeeloong… hardly a contender against this 256-core monster.)

    0 1
  2. Steve Loughran

    Spindle:CPU ratio bad for Hadoop

    I'm putting on my Hadoop committer hat and noting some things about it on this box -independent of any other HPC uses-

    1. Ignoring point (3) below, you don't need to "port" Apache Hadoop to the system provided you can bring up RHEL and Java on it, ideally 64-bit JVM from Sun, that being the only one that the Hadoop team opt to care about.

    2. There's not enough storage. 24 HDDs for that many CPUs? The current generation of Hadoop servers put 12x 3.5" HDDs in a 1U rack with 6-12 x86-64 cores, giving a ratio of 1 CPU to 1 or 2 HDDs. That's massive storage capacity and good IO bandwidth, with good CPU. Why? Storage capacity with some local datamining is the driving need. It's why HDD and not SDD is the storage, it's why 3.5" disks are chosen over 2.5". It brings you cost/petabyte down.

    3. The use of independent servers gives you better failure modes. If you built a rack out of these systems, you would need to somehow change Hadoop's topology logic to know that a set of servers are inter-dependent, and so that copies of blocks of the files (usually 128+ MB blocks) are not stored on servers instances in the same physical server. There's been discussion of making the placement policy pluggable, so Quanta could write a new Java class to implement placement differently, but as the plugin interface isn't there yet, they can't have done so.

    0 1
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Spying on your citizens?

    I must say I'm shocked that anything like that could come out of China .... ;)

    1 0
    1. mhenriday
      Reply Icon
      Big Brother

      Fortunate, is it not,

      that we who post here live in places like the US or the UK or - as I do - in Sweden - where no laws that permit government spying on citizens are on the books ; or if they are, they are only employed to protect us peaceful citizens from terrorists, spies, people who without permission share copyrighted material, and other such dangers to the health of the state....

      Henri

      3 0
This topic is closed for new posts.