So I think I've figured out what I want to do for my server build...

[bhtooefr]

Originally, it was going to be Atom-based... but three things made me change my mind.

1. Becoming really interested in the ARM
2. Noting that I only hit 5% CPU utilization on my current server
3. Noting that the ARM Cortex-A9MP quad core @ 1 GHz is supposed to do just as much work in 250 mW that the Atom 330 dual core @ 1.6 GHz (which is what I was going to use) needs 8 W for, on 65 nm (IIRC.)

Yeah.

Based on performance figures for the Cortex-A(8|9) and the Pentium III family (my current server has a 1.1 GHz Celeron Coppermine,) a single core 1 GHz Cortex-A(8|9) would be in the same performance ball park, and a dual core A9MP would be perfect for my performance goals. (Also, I'd prefer two slow cores to one fast core. Two 600 MHz cores will be better for this thing than one 1 GHz core.)

Now I just need a Mini-ITX board with said dual core A9MP (although more cores won't hurt - it's smart enough to power down unused cores,) SATA RAID, a couple GbE controllers, and a gig or two of DDR2, and I'm good to go. (Oh, and money to afford all this would be nice. )

(Actually, 512 megs would work - my current server has just over 11 MiB RAM free, with about 3.3 in swap. And that's with 384 MiB physical RAM. (In other words, I technically don't need /swap right now, although it's RIGHT on the edge.) But, RAM is one thing that you can never have too much of.)

(In case it wasn't clear... the server build's goals are to have a very low power system that can serve as a web and file server. Almost all of my data will be stored on it. In addition, it might be a router and DNS server for my network, too.)

[bigpook]

I haven't looked at ARM chips. I usually take my older machines and make them servers. Its all for fun and learning. My web server is running on a 800M Duron with 512M ram. Its overkill for what it is doing. The file/print server is running a 2G AMD with 1G ram. Complete overkill. But aside from the Duron its the slowest chip I have. I used to have some 486 machines but they were so old I **** canned them.

Where do you find ARM processors? and the mobo to go with?

[bhtooefr]

That's the trick, desktop and server ARM isn't exactly the most common thing. (And, ARM processors are almost always soldered down.) There are a few ARM mobos out there, but even 256 MiB RAM is rare to find (and that RAM is almost always soldered down, too,) and the fastest ones have 600 MHz XScales, which aren't anywhere near as fast as a Cortex at the same clock, let alone a 1 GHz Cortex.

But, the ARM Cortex-A9 is being aimed at the server market (among other things,) so when it comes out, I'm hoping there's a decent Mini-ITX server board for it. (Mini-ITX may actually not be that hard to find, as there are 1U cases that can hold 2 Mini-ITX boards, for higher compute density.)

I mean, my oldest x86 box is my server, and it's fine, but I'd rather have something power-optimized. The system power draw is probably in the 50 W range, and if I can get it down to the 10 W range, AND have twice the drives...

(I guess I'd load the super-nasty (WinME) on the server and donate it to Goodwill, so that it didn't get wasted. WinME because that's what the license sticker on the side of the machine is for.)

[bigpook]

Its the power draw that interests me. If you can get it down to 50W or less would be kind of nice. I feel wasteful running AMD chips 24/7 and most of the time they are just idle. Plus the heat generation is a problem, especially in the summer.
I assume the ARM chips don't generate alot of heat.

[bhtooefr]

50 W? I'm already in that ballpark now. I mean, the PSU itself is 90 W, and I know I'm nowhere near stressing it.

Note that I'm going to get down to 10 W, and it'll probably be well below 5 W at idle. (Actually, at true idle, it'll probably be below 2 W, as a complete TI OMAP3530-based motherboard takes less than 2 W TYPICAL.) And most of that power draw will be disk.

As for heat generation... the TI OMAP35 is designed to run heatsinkless. Not sure about the Freescale i.MX51, it's in higher clocked variants, but the figures for a four-core 1 GHz Cortex-A9 core in 65 nm process are 250 mW max, apparently, and the i.MX51 is a single-core Cortex-A8. (The chip takes more than that, though, because it's a complete SoC.)

[iMav]

I go the other way.  I have a more beefy box that serves as a virtual environment for my home lab.  Also serves up my perimeter firewall and a file server.  

I do the same thing with the server that hosts geekhack (although, it sits in a datacenter in Indianapolis).

[bigpook]

if its running without a heatsink then how much heat can it generate...that would be appealing. You mentioned 50W in the previous post, getting it down to 10W would be sweet.
If I was serving multiple users in an office environment I wouldn't care about it.

[cb951303]

Ok here's a little heads up for you

western digital 5400rpm 2.5'' hdd uses 2.5W while read/write whereas fujitsu 7200rpm 2.5'' uses 2.3 Assuming that you're going for 2 disk raid you gain 0.4W! Yayyyyy!

EDIT: And apparently hitachi 7200 2.5'' drives only consumes 1.8W while read/write. Nice!

EDIT: BTW have you considered VIA CPUs?

[bhtooefr]

50 W is what my current Celeron-based server draws, roughly (I haven't put a kill-a-watt on it or anything, though.)

[bhtooefr]

I've considered VIA CPUs for about a tenth of a second, and then realized, "hey, Atoms are cheaper, faster, and use less power."

Anyway, here's a table of 2.5" 500 GB drives. Prices are from Newegg. I've left out some redundant models (I don't need a G-shock sensor, and I don't need on-disk encryption.)



All figures are for low-power idle except for the Extended Availability Fujitsu models (the ones marked server model in the notes.) Those only have a performance idle mode. (Which is the same as the performance idle power draw of the 5K500 (for the E5K500) and the 5K500.B (for the 5K500.B EA model.))

Bold means that it's the best in the category. Spin-up power isn't really important, of course... so I'll have to study this list. Seek, R/W, and LP idle power are what's going to be most important with this machine's usage profile.

Edit: Looks like it's between the MJA2 BH and the 5K500.B (non-EA model.) So, I'll compare their specs a little more closely.

Edit 2: 5K500.B edges out the MJA2 BH ever so slightly in latency. Everything else is the same.

[cb951303]

great comparison.

what does server model means? what's extra?

[bhtooefr]

The server models are drives designed to be stuck in something like a blade server and run 24/7.

However, they tend to be more expensive, and don't have some of the lower power (but still running) modes.

And, my server's workload is rather... light. Almost more like a desktop or laptop.

Also, seeing as they'll be in a RAID 1...

[cb951303]

I've considered VIA CPUs for about a tenth of a second, and then realized, "hey, Atoms are cheaper, faster, and use less power."

I've just found out that atom with a 945 chipset motherboard uses approx. 33W whereas via epia boards uses 18W max with a C7 CPU (now there is Nano which uses even less power).

You're right about the TDP though. Atom uses less. But VIA motherboards are far much better on power consumption.

EDIT: hmm, I stand corrected. 18W is VIA CPU only. With motherboard its more

[cb951303]

Do you know how AMD Geode LX and NX family compares to ARM Cortex? Search didn't reveal too much.

[bhtooefr]

Geode LX gets slaughtered in both speed and wattage by ARM9, let alone Cortex.

Geode NX is in the Atom ballpark for speed, and not so much for wattage. So, still beaten by Cortex.

[cb951303]

Geode LX gets slaughtered in both speed and wattage by ARM9, let alone Cortex.

Geode NX is in the Atom ballpark for speed, and not so much for wattage. So, still beaten by Cortex.

Ok one lest try (I'm trying to find an acceptable x86 solution ) what about ATOM Z510?
This board looks really cool: 2 x Sata, Gigabit Ethernet, Upto 2GiG Ram
According to legend this CPUs consume 2.7W average.

[bhtooefr]

The Z510 is a slow single core, though... and doesn't have anywhere close to the power consumption.

Let me put it this way... a 1.6 GHz Atom 330 and a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 quad core are roughly as fast. (This is based on DMIPS, which is inaccurate, but it's close enough for ballpark estimates.)

The Z510 is a 1.1 GHz single-core Atom. So, one core that's slower than half of the Atom 330. It has a 2 W TDP.

The Cortex-A9MP quad-core apparently pulls 250 mW at 1 GHz. (Source: http://www.soccentral.com/results.asp?EntryID=23875)

[cb951303]

The Z510 is a slow single core, though... and doesn't have anywhere close to the power consumption.

Let me put it this way... a 1.6 GHz Atom 330 and a 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A9 quad core are roughly as fast. (This is based on DMIPS, which is inaccurate, but it's close enough for ballpark estimates.)

The Z510 is a 1.1 GHz single-core Atom. So, one core that's slower than half of the Atom 330. It has a 2 W TDP.

The Cortex-A9MP quad-core apparently pulls 250 mW at 1 GHz. (Source: http://www.soccentral.com/results.asp?EntryID=23875)

wait I got it wrong, the average power consumption for Atom Z series is 160-220 mW according to here http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080401comp.htm

it's supposed to be the fastest CPU under 3W.

If cortex has 4 cores and pulls 250 mW, it surely is revolutionary.
Any motherboards for cortex?

[bhtooefr]

For a single-core A8, there's a few, the Beagle Board probably being the best. (But nowhere near meeting my needs.)

The A9 isn't out yet.

[cb951303]

Ever since you gave me the idea of ultra-low power home file/web server I'm obsessed with it I'm definitely building one.

However I want to go with a x86 solution for the sake of maintenance and variety of distros. So far Z510 seems to be the best solution. Sure it's single core  and 1Ghz but for a home file server I don't need anything faster or multiple cores.

For the power consumption, it rocks! This board for example, under heavy CPU usage, consumes 5.2 W (At least thats what they told me and written in the datasheet). Add 2 x HDDs to that and you have < 10W computer Even Z530 one (1.6GHz) uses 7.9W under heavy CPU usage.

Thank you mate

[andb]

The time you'll spend trying to get this to work will have a value far greater than the cost of the electricity you'll use in 10 years of operation! lol

How about just take the lowest voltage intel available at a reasonable price, underclock the processor in bios, setup up clockstepping (which usually isn't set up on server distros and has a tendency to screw up the clock on any guest VMs).

Then, when you realize you need to run some more apps, you can just clock up the processor to normal speed. After all the environmental impact of using some extra electricity is probably lower than the impact of manufacturing the board and processor that you'll want to upgrade to in 2 years.

My personal server is a AMD Athlon(tm) Processor 3000+, about 2 yrs old I guess. If I was just running  rtorrent, NFS and Apache / PHP then it would probably be overkill.

But I have all of the disks encrypted and kcryptd can use 25-40% easily. As its the fileserver for my mediacenter via NFS, I don't want that to have to wait for CPU cycles. Add to that that my homes are mounted onto that machine and it makes for a pretty decent load. So, if you are interested in disk encryption I suggest you think twice about the low energy use platforms.

Before anyone goes on a rant about disk encryption being useless, my basic desire is to protect my data in the event of casual theft, not to hide stuff from spy agencies.

[bhtooefr]

Keep in mind, my time is worth $0 right now, and I find this sort of thing fun anyway.

[andb]

Keep in mind, my time is worth $0 right now, and I find this sort of thing fun anyway.

ROTFL.

I've also had some longer periods of "free time" when I was looking for something interesting to keep me busy. I'm the same way about playing with odd hardware, it can be tons of fun to play with unusual stuff. I can see this being useful in a large hosted server environment. But at the end of the day what you really have is just a low power server, both in terms of electrical usage and horsepower...

[itlnstln]

I wish I had free time.  Just wait until you grow up.  The money I make is pretty nice, but I am pretty much a slave to work.  Balance your priorities, and choose wisely.

OR...

Get a cushy government job.

OR...

Be happy with the job you have, because these days, you may not have it tomorrow.

[andb]

Or work as a consultant. I choose the work I want and by making sure I don't have crazy expenses (had to pass on buying that Porsche, sadly ) I can take a month off pretty much any time I feel like it.

[itlnstln]

I thought about consulting for a while.  I checked out several firms in the area, talked to some people about it, and looked at how we treat our consultants and decided to pass.  The travel (across the US) and crap you get from companies (at least around here, anyway) swayed my decision.

[andb]

Interesting article about Atom vs Intel for the desktop in terms of efficiency: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-atom-efficiency,2069.html

One of the more interesting parts is the comparison of power supply efficiency.

[bhtooefr]

I take anything Tom's Hardware Guide says with a grain of salt.

And, Atom's problem is the chipset.

[bhtooefr]

I think, with some compromising, I've found the board.

If I can get one, and it doesn't cost an ARM and a leg. (Just an ARM, I'm hoping. ) (Sorry about the pun, I just had to make it. )

http://www.arm.com/products/DevTools/platformbaseboardcortexa8.html

I think it's got RAM expansion, too - but even if it doesn't, 512 SHOULD be enough - I've got 384 in my current server and it's currently using 0k swap. Clock speed's a little lower than I'd like, but I can deal with it.

And, having both PCI and PCIe means... SATA RAID card. WIN.

[bhtooefr]

Heh, it won't be that board... I asked ARM for a quote, and... they didn't give me an exact quote, but let's just say that it really is out of the price range of anyone not actually doing ARM platform development.

[cb951303]

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/41525/136/

looks promising. it can also be used as a file server if you use a USB hub + USB HDDs.

[FKSSR]

That's pretty awesome.  I don't know anything about servers really, but that looks like it could be really useful for certain situations.

[zwmalone]

Or a beagleboard...  You can fit full debian with gnome on one of these AND it's endlessly hackable

[bhtooefr]

The issue with the beagleboard is... not enough RAM.

And, the Marvell Sheeva burns more electricity than I'd like, and I've not seen any performance figure comparisons between it and Cortex-A8...