Creating an Open Data Center with 64-bit ARM

TechnologyRamesh Radhakrishnan

Disruptions to IT

These Megatrends are Rewriting the Rules of IT

Cloud

Mobile

Big Data

?SW Defined

These Companies are seen as the New Benchmark for IT

85%using cloud

tools regularly

73%have mix of corporate &

personal devices

300xgrowth of digital universe

plan to deploy SDN within a

year

71%

Outline

Datacenter Trends

ARM in the Datacenter– Why?

• Economics• Innovation from Open Ecosystem

– Where?• Workloads and Applications• Web Scale workloads

– When?• 64-bits & Performance• Standardization & Ecosystem readiness

ARM Server Ecosystem Development & Evaluation– Dell Solutions Center – HPC Case Study on ARM: EP Analytics

Computing Landscape Evolution

“Computer classes die or are overtaken by lower-priced, more rapidly evolving general-purpose computers as the less-expensive alternatives operating alone, combined into multiple shared memory micro processors and multiple computer clusters”

- Bells Law for the Birth and Death of Computer Classes

– Roughly every decade a new, lower priced computer class forms based on a new programming platform, network, and interface

– Higher volume manufacturing leads to decreasing cost while simultaneously increasing performance

Supercomputers

Constant price, increasing performance

Sub-class formation

New “minimal priced” computers

Pri

ce

Time

Holistic View of IT Classes

Hosting/Web Tier

Warehouse-Scale Datacenters

HPCTraditional

IT

Traditional EnterpriseGeneral PurposeReliability, Manageability

High-Performance ComputingPerformanceR&D

Hosting/WebTCO Scalability

Warehouse-ScaleExponential ScalabilityNew software platforms

Modernizing Traditional IT

Converged & aggregated fabrics-Simple & Low cost IO AggregationEast-West network trafficNative Fibre Channel at chassis edge

Discrete Conventional networks1GbE & 10GbE NICs

Mainstream compute 4S & 2S servers

scale-out, & microservers Dense 2S Commodity1S Microservers

SANCentralized storage

Direct Attached Storage (DAS) Scale-out, Software Defined StorageVirtual SANs (vSAN)

Drivers : low cost, simplicity, easy to scale, flexibility

Right Sized Shared InfrastructureOptimized for project scale to rack scaleSmall failure domain

Proprietary HardwareLarge upfront investmentLarge failure domain

Why ARM Servers?

Economic & Ecosystem Factors– Acquisition and OpEx challenges

– Choice in CPU vendors

– Volume economics

– Adoption of open source and software defined platforms

– Power and Cooling challenges

– Lower manufacturing costs

Faster Pace of Innovation– Specialized silicon optimizations for workloads and customers

– Fab Technology advances

– Integration of high-speed components (better performance/$)

– Servers for scale-out and cloud platforms

Datacenter Ready?

Platform Readiness

– Uboot vs. UEFI

– FDT vs. ACPI

– SBSA

– SBBR

Software Availability– Server Class OS & Hypervisors

– Optimized Open Source Packages; Optimized Linux Ecosystem: Linaro

– Compilers, Runtime Environments, Middleware..

Performance– “Good Enough” satisfies certain workloads

– Single threaded and throughput performance is important to penetrate broader market

64-bit Performance Gains (HPC)

32-bit 64-bit0.0

2.0

4.0

6.0

8.07.4X

NAMD

32-bit 64-bit0.01.02.03.04.05.06.07.08.0

4.6X

HPL

cg ep ft is lu mg0.0

5.0

10.0

15.0

20.0

13.2

9.3

17.4

11.2 11.8

7.4

NPB

32-bit 64-bit0.0

1.0

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

6.0

7.0

8.0

5.6X

milc

**Performance measured on 32-bit & 64-bit Dell ARM POC Systems

64-bit Performance Gains (Web 2.0)

32-bit 64-bit0.0

2.0

4.0

6.0

8.0

6.5X

MemcacheD

32-bit 64-bit0.0

2.0

4.0

6.0

8.0

5.7X

Web Server 1 20

1

2

3

4

98%

34%

3.02

DVD Store Benchmark

transactions/min CPU load

**Performance measured on 32-bit & 64-bit Dell ARM POC Systems

Workloads & Usage Scenarios

12

General Purpose HPCC

(Research, Higher education, etc.)

EDA and Manufacturing(Chip/System design modeling, layout and

simulations etc.)

Big Data Analytics(Emerging & Intersecting with

distributed compute/data)

Cold Storage(Archive/Backup @ lowest

$/GB)

Media Streaming/CDN(Explosion of content/media delivery on a global scale)

Web2.0(Rich Media, Fast network, Limitless User Interaction)

L.A.M.P. Host(Best platform to support the backbone of the Web)

Dedicated Hosting(Best platform to enable

competitive SLA)

Object Storage(Best Scale-out platform for

solving big data growth)

Sto

rag

e O

ptim

ize

d A

RM

S

erv

ers

SO

C

Se

rve

rsS

OC

Se

rve

rs +

A

cce

lera

tion

(o

ptio

nal

)

Co

mp

ute

Re

qui

rem

en

ts

Cloud Hosting/XaaS(Cost Optimized platform

for scale out)

13

System Performance

**Intel performance is using GCC compiler and average across basic, standard & advance SKU stack

** SPECint scores from www.spec.org and adjusted for gcc

** CPU price from www.intel.com

*** ARM performance is hypothetical and to illustrate required range to handle customer workloads

$0

$500

$1,000

$1,500

$2,000

$2,500

$3,000

$3,500

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

15

0 20

2

34

6 40

6

37

1 43

7

34

5

51

2 55

2

45

8

60

1 65

2

65

6 69

2 72

4

74

2 78

1Performance CPU Price

CP

U C

ost

SOC: Enterprise 2in1U

Memory: 64-128GB

Storage: 1-2 HDD

I/O: 1/10GbE

Mapping of Hyperscale WorkloadsDensity and configuration requirements

SOC : Micro 2-8

Memory: 8-16GB

Storage: 0-2 HDD

I/O: 1GbE

SOC: Micro 2-4

Memory: 16- 32GB

Storage: 1-2 HDD

I/O: 1/10GbE, JBOD, Card

SOC : Enterprise 2in1U

Memory: 64-128GB

Storage: 2-4 HDD

I/O: 10GbE,JBOD,Card

SOC : Micro/Enterprise

Memory: 32-64GB

Storage: 4-8 HDD

I/O: 1/10GbE

SOC : Micro/Enterprise

Memory: 32-64GB

Storage: 8-12 HDD

I/O: 1/10GbE

SOC : Micro

Memory: 16-32GB

Storage: 12-16 HDD

I/O: 1GbE

Dell Confidential – Customer NDA Required

15

Call to Action: Access for Remote Test & Ecosystem Development

Hosted in the Dell Solutions Labs for customers interested in 64bit ARM ecosystem developmentRemote access instructions will be provided once a request is received and customers can login to the Dell Solutions Lab network Requires approved Dell NDA & License/Test agreement to get access

Ramesh RadhakrishnanSr. Prinicipal Engineer/Technologist

Ramesh_Radhakrishnan@dell.com