[Beowulf] More AMD rumors

[Christopher Samuel]

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On 20/11/12 01:28, Douglas Eadline wrote:

> Though not formally announced, Semiaccurate seems to have learned 
> that AMD is leaving the X86 server business.

Whilst sad (and possibly inaccurate) it wouldn't surprise me if they
did that in the long term and turned AMD into an ARM & GPU company.

They've already announced 64-bit ARM "Opteron" server CPUs.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/29/amd-64-bit-arm-opteron-server-cpus/

ARM is where the market seems to be going, this ZDnet article points
out that *Android* device shipments alone now outnumber *PC* shipments
at a ratio of 3:2 :

http://www.zdnet.com/android-really-is-the-new-windows-7000007450/

Given that Beowulf was (originally) all about using commodity
components over specialised ones then I'd argue that ARM has replaced
x86 as commodity CPUs, just not in a form factor we're used to using
(and certainly not yet with the RAM we need).

But that just needs a little time and real 64-bit ARM hardware to
start shipping (the Linux kernel support landed in time for 3.7-rc1),
it's not a technical problem...

cheers,
Chris
- -- 
 Christopher Samuel        Senior Systems Administrator
 VLSCI - Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative
 Email: samuel at unimelb.edu.au Phone: +61 (0)3 903 55545
 http://www.vlsci.org.au/      http://twitter.com/vlsci

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