Microsoft asks Intel to build a 16-core Atom server-chip | WinRumors

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13 points·eaxitect··5 comments

Seamicro is already building servers out of atom chips

http://www.seamicro.com/

The problem that's been pointed out before is that Intel imposes the artificial restriction that you can't use ECC RAM with Atom chips. At the scale of the SeaMicro devices, one would think that memory errors should be somewhat common. That doesn't leave one to put too much faith in the device. Though SeaMicro may have some clever way around that...

I thin having Atom cores for servers is reasonable. Atom cores have enough power for many company level computing...

which means ARM do too, especially Tegra 2 (dual core, 1GHz)

it's possible to recompile server apps for a new architecture - and theoretically effortless, if running on a VM (e.g. Java, C#) that has been ported.

ARM chips use much less power per processing throughput, and since power consumption and heating are serious issue in huge server farms, this seems a clear opportunity. eg. just googled to find: Calxeda is building a 480 core ARM server, and claiming x10 cost savings and x10 performance gains. But sounds like vapourware (and is; doesn't exist yet). http://www.calxeda.com/

I've read many articles about ARM movement onto Non-mobile platforms (especially for server virtualization). Indeed, power consumption is one of the biggest problem of today's datacenters. Hence, if we can stack to scale-out cheap and low power servers like legos, that'd be great...

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