Did somebody heard the news about this new "DOME" microserver which is being jointly built by IBM and ASTRON (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy)?

It seems quite an interesting piece of PowerPC hardware:
- CPU Freescale P5040 or T4240
- up to 48GB of RAM
- up to 5Gbit ports
- PSoC 3 chipset for monitoring, debugging and booting



More info at
- Wikipedia
- enterprisetech
- YouTube

Last edited by virgolamobile on 08-Jul-2014 at 09:45 PM.
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@virgolamobile

Interesting:

"The system board that IBM Zurich created for the first pass of the DOME microserver cost about $500 for a single unit, including the processor and 4 GB of main memory plus the circuit board and the copper plate. Luijten is not sure what the cost of the T4240 board will be yet, but he estimates that it will be something on the order of $650 for the bill of materials for the components."

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retired

@"it will be something on the order of $650 for the bill of materials for the components"

Not too bad for one of the most powerfull single SOC board in the world.

And one box will have 1536 e6500 cores (3072 virtual cores).
It would encode my DVD collection pretty fast. (and render Babylon5 episode1 in a few minutes?)

"total cost of under $100.000 for a fully loaded system" Ok... not for my DVD playground then.

(And I find it interesting that IBM is part of it, even though the project uses freescale chip.)

Last edited by KimmoK on 09-Jul-2014 at 10:39 AM.
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// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
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// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

If you read in the article linked, they would like to see soon a Power 8 based SOC. This would be great. I think that is a matter of time and a Power 8 based SOC for desktop usage will see the light

Last edited by AmigaBlitter on 09-Jul-2014 at 10:26 AM.

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@AmigaBlitter

Power8 (or7 or 6) technology should enable 5Ghz few core chip without too high power usage. But I doubt there is customers enough for that kind of single/few core PowerPC perfomance. (our niche does not count, and IMO telecom sector prefer shorter pipeline etc...)

@dome...

"The complete microserver is based on the same form factor as standard FB-DIMM socket."

Imagine if we had motherboard that had those sockets for CPU(s).


Offtopick, perhaps:
btw. theres also stuff to read at power.org: https://www.power.org/
"IBM partners see POWER8 servers as real threat to x86 universe"
"IBM says its test results show it will execute most workloads two to three times as fast as POWER7, with Power Systems running BLU Acceleration on Power capable of analyzing data 82 times faster than a comparably configured x86-based system." About BLU Acceleration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_BLU_Acceleration

"The Fall and Rise of IBM Power"

etc...

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_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

Quote:

Power8 (or7 or 6) technology should enable 5Ghz few core chip without too high power usage. But I doubt there is customers enough for that kind of single/few core PowerPC perfomance. (our niche does not count, and IMO telecom sector prefer shorter pipeline etc...)

Done with IBM's planing tools. Keep in mind that this is their ENTRY model and this calculation doesn't even have any disks installed.

@virgolamobile

slightly off-topic

I'm reading from a new Norwegian space mag, that Nasa is
using 38 PowerPc cpu n their new astronauts robots..
it is called R2 :)

just wanted to mention it.

Last edited by noXLar on 09-Jul-2014 at 11:37 AM.
Last edited by noXLar on 09-Jul-2014 at 11:37 AM.

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@noXLar

PowerPC has good track record with "radiation hardened" products.
(100% of Martians use PowerPC... so it's definitely in manstream over there)

@Rose

Interesting.
If four cores generate 500W @ 3Ghz, I wonder how they manage to cool down the 12core version or the 5Ghz version...

For lower power they could remove L3, 3cores etc... and still the 8 thread single core device would be overkill for our niche needs.


Anyway... will be interesting to see what comes from openpower in the future.

Last edited by KimmoK on 09-Jul-2014 at 12:17 PM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

Quote:

If four cores generate 500W @ 3Ghz, I wonder how they manage to cool down the 12core version or the 5Ghz version...

When entry model costs ~8000€ (4-Core@3ghz + 8gig ram without disks) you can pay for industrial level air conditioning for racks. And Power8 Line tops at 4150Mhz.

@cooling

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/131259-ibm-deploys-hot-water-cooled-supercomputer
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429179/intel-servers-take-a-deep-dive-to-cool-off/
http://www.militaryaerospace.com/articles/2013/04/IBM-DARPA-ICECool.html

Power as heating equipment: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/ibm-aquasar-schematic-large.jpg

(cooling in DOME)

Last edited by KimmoK on 11-Jul-2014 at 09:48 AM.
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_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

What seems interesting is that the board with processor and ram could cost about $650. If we add HDD, case, CD-ROM, Video Card and Audio card, we can have a $1100 system. Not bad. Maybe A-eon and Acube could make a deal with this company.

We lack the Xmos chip, btw, and some other customizations.

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@AmigaBlitter

650$ is the production cost. The final cost would be higher as most businesses wish to make money. I would venture to guess a customer would probably pay around 1500$ for this board, which is not bad(in AmigaOne terms) consifering it's much faster than either X1000 or X5000.

What suprises me most is that P5040 is still a 45 nm part.

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@WolfToTheMoon

Of course we need something like this too:


https://www.flickr.com/photos/ibm_research_zurich/14426497187/in/set-72157645434924403

If IBM notice that A-eon have made a board using some freescale chip, that can run some serious Linux distros, maybe they can be interested in the product too, who knows? After all, they are heavily spotting Linux on power these days

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@WolfToTheMoon

USD1500 might seem slightly high, as full development systems are sold at that price (available in volume)
(T4240 devkit from digikey) (info pdf) (quick start guide)

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@AmigaBlitter

[QUOTE]If IBM notice that A-eon have made a board using some
freescale chip, that can run some serious Linux distros,
maybe they can be interested in the product too, who
knows? [/QUOTE]

I think P5040 is too slow to interest anyone seriously in 2015. See that DOME is moving to T4240.

Last edited by WolfToTheMoon on 10-Jul-2014 at 10:43 AM.

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@KimmoK

We don't know if Freescale is subsidizing dev boards or in which quantity they are made. I think 1500$ is a pretty good estimate and I think still a pretty damn good price for a PPC system, compared to AmigaOne/SAM boards.

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@WolfToTheMoon

Consider that other things are needed. The customizations above mentioned, and the OS4 port. The fact that the userbase is very low, the price is relatively high.

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@AmigaBlitter

What customization?

Last edited by WolfToTheMoon on 10-Jul-2014 at 11:08 AM.

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@AmigaBlitter



Just thinking about an Amiga xNext with 12 core and 24 thread

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@WolfToTheMoon

"We don't know if Freescale is subsidizing dev boards or in which quantity they are made."

I do not have the link ready. But it seems those boards are made by third party and available in volume.

(not found yet the "volume" info, but the board component list for BillOfMaterials etc can be found here)

Last edited by KimmoK on 10-Jul-2014 at 12:03 PM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?