James’ World

The Supermicro X7SPA-HF is a near-server-class $200 Atom-based motherboard.

Pluses are extreme low-power operation (under 35 watts for an entire system), dual core with HT, dual gigabit NICs and IPMI remote mgmt. (Reportedly there are still some minor bugs in the IPMI code, for example with mounting ISO images remotely.)

Minuses are that memory is limited to 4 GB non-ECC single-channel SO-DIMM (notebook) DDR2 RAM, but hey, an Atom is a slow processor suitable for file-serving and not heavy calculations. I have heard of serving ftp traffic at 300 Mbps with this mobo.

I’m thinking of using it in the data center where power is at a premium, but having a dedicated box is nice – uses like an HAProxy appliance or a PXE/kickstart build server.

One use of Atoms is “rack filler”: The low-power Atom servers can be distributed into racks where there’s not enough power for another 2-amp Dell server, but where there’s still a half amp or so left on a circuit.

The power budget looks like:

mobo/cpu	21 watts
8800 RPM fan	2 watts
notebook hard drive	5 watts
4 GB DDR2 SO-DIMM RAM	1 watt
80%-efficient power supply losses	6 watts
Total System	35 watts

The total cost of this server is about $450 to assemble from the above mobo and Supermicro case/80% PSU.

Thanks to Colin from HE for telling me about his experiences with the D510.

In comparison, “ULV mobile chips are designed to fit what Intel calls a thermal design point of around 17 watts, compared with 25 watts to 35 watts for conventional laptop chips.”

wht: 0.2amp server with Intel Atom D510
anandtech.com: Intel Atom D510: Pine Trail Boosts Performance, Cuts Power
atacom.com: MB13_SUPE_X7_HF pricing
APAQ Digital: Atom Servers
GCC 4.5 Release Series Changes, New Features, and Fixes: Support for the Intel Atom processor is now available through the -march=atom and -mtune=atom options.
tomshardware.com: UPDATE: Apple Mac Mini Based on Nvidia Ion (Rumors)
engadget: Atom N470 at CES
techpowerup: Intel Announces Next-Generation Atom Platform (Intel press release with forum comments)
Supermicro: A+ Server 1012G-MTF (single-CPU, up to 12 cores)
wht: SuperMicro’s IPMI and browser Java version, “Downgrade your Java version to 1.6.19 and disable automatic updates. Java broke some functionality in the most recent upgrade that the console requires.”
steadfastnetworks.com: Now Offering Atom D510 + IPMI for $99.95/month
computerworld.com: SeaMicro’s SM10000 cloud server sports 512 Atom Z530 processors

Supermicro’s X7SPA-HF D510 4gb ram, 7200rpm 32MB cache sata2 (thanks HE.net):

~$ openssl speed
Doing md2 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 226475 md2's in 3.00s
Doing md2 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 120692 md2's in 3.00s
Doing md2 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 42107 md2's in 2.99s
Doing md2 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 11682 md2's in 3.00s
Doing md2 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 1509 md2's in 3.00s
Doing md4 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 2401326 md4's in 2.99s
Doing md4 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 2142527 md4's in 3.00s
Doing md4 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 1623085 md4's in 3.00s
Doing md4 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 828401 md4's in 3.00s
Doing md4 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 148964 md4's in 3.00s
Doing md5 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 1849959 md5's in 3.00s
Doing md5 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 1640520 md5's in 3.00s
Doing md5 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 1213169 md5's in 3.00s
Doing md5 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 599186 md5's in 3.00s
Doing md5 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 104641 md5's in 2.99s
Doing hmac(md5) for 3s on 16 size blocks: 2633248 hmac(md5)'s in 3.00s
Doing hmac(md5) for 3s on 64 size blocks: 2215126 hmac(md5)'s in 3.00s
Doing hmac(md5) for 3s on 256 size blocks: 1503649 hmac(md5)'s in 3.00s
Doing hmac(md5) for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 661824 hmac(md5)'s in 3.00s
Doing hmac(md5) for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 106496 hmac(md5)'s in 3.00s
Doing sha1 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 1625929 sha1's in 3.00s
Doing sha1 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 1169240 sha1's in 3.00s
Doing sha1 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 631166 sha1's in 2.99s
Doing sha1 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 223384 sha1's in 3.00s
Doing sha1 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 31758 sha1's in 3.00s
Doing sha256 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 1153538 sha256's in 3.00s
Doing sha256 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 675082 sha256's in 3.00s
Doing sha256 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 300594 sha256's in 3.00s
Doing sha256 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 93616 sha256's in 3.00s
Doing sha256 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 12605 sha256's in 3.00s
[...]

In comparison, a dual Opteron 248 with 8 GB RAM from Nov. 2003 on 1.85 amps does:

$ openssl speed
Doing md2 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 375455 md2's in 2.99s
Doing md2 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 196333 md2's in 3.00s
Doing md2 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 67419 md2's in 3.00s
Doing md2 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 18599 md2's in 3.01s
Doing md2 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 2398 md2's in 3.00s
Doing md4 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 5122350 md4's in 3.00s
Doing md4 for 3s on 64 size blocks: 4476227 md4's in 3.00s
Doing md4 for 3s on 256 size blocks: 3168069 md4's in 3.00s
Doing md4 for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 1453159 md4's in 3.00s
Doing md4 for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 241911 md4's in 3.00s
Doing md5 for 3s on 16 size blocks: 4038740 md5's in 3.00s
[...]

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Business, Linux, Tech, Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.