August 11, 2006
A small start-up company called Movidis is announcing two new Linux servers using a 16-core
chip in conjunction with the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo. The Revolution x-16 models each use
a single 500 MHz or 600 MHz Cavium Networks Octeon CN-3860 chip, said Ken Goldsholl, the company's
co-founder and chief technology officer.
A 16-core CPU is a lot compared with current, smaller processors. What's more, multiple cores boost
server speed and overall performance by farming different tasks to different parts of the chip.
As a comparison, the Sun Microsystems' UltraSparc T-1 Niagara chip has only eight cores, while mainstream x-86
chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices will move from today's dual-core designs to quad-core models within the
next year.
But the Movidis systems have a major difference from mainstream servers: Their chips use MIPS processor cores,
an architecture originally designed by Silicon Graphics.
MIPS chips can't run software for major server processors of the x86, Sparc, Power or Itanium ilk.
"I do believe people will take a chance with a different architecture to get other things they need," Goldsholl said.
Cobalt Networks, another company that tried MIPS servers, dropped the design in favor of x-86 chips, and
SGI is moving to Intel processors.
But with open-source software, new versions can be compiled for the chip and the version of Debian Linux
that Cavium supplies with the CPU works with the Revolution x-16 servers with only minor modifications,
Goldsholl said.
The company also includes higher-level software such as the Apache Web server and the MySQL and PostgreSQL
databases and supports it all.
Costs for the system range from $3,000 for a 1.75-inch think model with no drives to $12,000 for the 3.5-inch
model with the maximum of eight drives, he said.
The Octeon chips consume only 30 watts of power. The overall systems have networking acceleration, eight
gigabit Ethernet ports, and hardware-based encryption capabilities.
Like Sun's X4500 Thumper system, Movidis' products had their genesis as a video-streaming server. But "It was
very hard to break into video-on-demand," Goldsholl said.
Cable TV companies were "very reluctant to buy from a brand-new small company." He thinks he'll get farther
with the general-purpose server market.
Source: C- Net News
Bookmark this Tech Blog by
clicking here.
Home |
Write to us
