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.)