Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
Summary: Would you believe that ARM processors, those little chips that power so many smartphones and tablets, have a future on servers? Ubuntu does.
In today's data center, millions of instructions per second (MIPS) and gigabyte per second (GBPS) throughput are well and good, but being green (having a low power consumption) is becoming just as important. That's why Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, is betting that in the long run, ARM processors will play an important role in tomorrow's servers and datacenters.
Ubuntu Linux doesn't play a big role in the x86 business server space. For Linux, Red Hat takes those honors. So, after four years of working with ARM, Canonical is trying to win a new server market for itself by helping create the ARM business server space.
Here's how Canonical plans on making this work. In October 2011, the Ubuntu Server 11.10 release will be released simultaneously for x86, x86-64 and ARM-based architectures. The base image of the releases will be the same across architectures with a common kernel baseline. The ARM architecture will also be part of the long-term support (LTS) version of Ubuntu Server in 12.04 and other future releases.
Canonical's initial development focus and optimization will be around the most popular Ubuntu workloads of web/network infrastructure and distributed data processing via NoSQL or big data applications where workloads typically use hundreds or thousands of systems. Then, starting in 2012, Canonical hopes to become the operating system of choice for this new server architecture.
The company doesn't expect businesses to move immediately to ARM. This is a long-term move. At LinuxCon in Vancouver, British Columbia, Chris Kenyon, Canonical's VP of original equipment manufacturer (OEM) services, told me that “ARM on a server is a journey. It will be several years before it goes mainstream.”
Canonical is convinced, though, that ARM on servers will eventually become popular though. Kenyon explained, “ARM's fundamentals are quite sound with its multi-core, multi-GHz processors. If you look at certain work loads, the ability to splice CPUs and memory will give you huge I/O, which makes it ideal for some database work.”
As for power management, besides simply using comparatively little power, ARM makes it easy to idle down nodes and cores. The end result? Datacenter administrators using ARM servers will be able to save power, and thus money, over their x86 rivals.
That said, Kenyon is the first to admit that Linux on ARM for servers still has major issues to address. According to Kenyon, virtualization and 64-bit support both need much work before ARM is server-ready. So Canonical is working on those and other issues, such as looking for common work loads that will work well on the ARM architecture.
Does this sound interesting? Want to get involved? Ubuntu and friends will be happy to have your help. You can find project information on the Ubuntu ARM Server wiki. If you want a more formal partnership, hardware partners, independent software vendors (ISVs) and open-source application developers can contact Canonical via the company's partner inquiry form.
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Talkback
From a cost reduction point of view
I believe at one point Amazon Engineers were considering ARM. Don't know where that led.
Amazon ARM = nowhere
Virtualization is also a joke.
Both of these equate to an absolute non-presence of ARM in any datacenter.
Just like that rumour of Facebook using Atom's for clusters.
Only fools are positive. Forrester analysis would indicate otherwise
fyi
h-t-t-p://blogs.forrester.com/richard_fichera/11-01-25-ibm_and_arm_continue_their_collaboration_major_win_for_arm
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
Despite the rumor mill around the end of 2010, ARM has yet to detail their plans for their 64-bit ISA. ARM's virtualization infrastructure also requires some improvement in order to support server operating systems.
I am certain they're working on both these issues, but for now, the Cortex-A15 (ARM's latest architecture) is still 32-bit only and has limited virtualization support.
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
Windows on ARM will fail as everyone will just flock to the x86/64 versions.
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
2.2 potato 15 August 2000 6 ? 3,900 2003-04 New architectures: arm, powerpc
And Debian/Linux had working support for 64-bit Intel long before Microsoft.
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
What about desktop on tablets?
there already is
Some are missing the point
The other advantage of virtualization is space, but if a 4U rack case can hold 21 dual core ARM systems, each with it's own drive, this also becomes somewhat moot. If the system had been setup with iSCSI or ATA-over-ethernet, then more cores can easily be added to the same chasis.
The biggest advantage for 64 bit is in the database world. Web servers, file servers, media servers, etc, really don't benefit from 64 bit that much (outside of the immediate compiler optimizations over i686 compatibility that most 32 bit OS's are running).
You're incorrect
All servers can benefit from increased memory usage, especially with multiple connections, and multimedia workloads. 32-bit only supports 4GB of addressable memory space. When you're working with multimedia workloads over the web, you might be streaming and/or recompressing videos for many users, or such, and 4GB is literally next to nothing for memory for a server of that usage scenario.
Also, your assessment of power management facilities of modern hypervisors is likewise incorrect.
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
Excellent points. While it will obviously be nice to have virtualization and 64-bit versions (which would allow for greater memory capacity, if nothing else), such features aren't necessarily requirements on everyone's shopping list.
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
Of course, Intel's chips are going to consume a lot more power than a mobile A15, but they deliver A LOT more computing horsepower. It will be interesting to see what kinds of ARM chip make it onto server boards - I am certain that ARM based servers will use chips that aren't quite as ruthlessly power conservative as their mobile counterparts, but are likely to be a lot more frugal than Intel's high-end server chips.
What impact Intel's future architectures and manufacturing capabilities will have on this front, we'll have to wait and see.
Oh ... and FWIW, advanced OS and virtualization platforms agressively consolidate logical threads onto available physical threads and can end up shutting down several cores and even entire processors if the machine is under light load, dynamically switching those cores and processors on as needed. This can result in considerable power savings.
ARM has some way to go to compete
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
"Remember, virtualization and 64bit address space didn't even exist in the server room only a few short years ago. "
Virtualization existed on mainframes eons ago, for the 64-bit, let others address that.
yes, incorrect
VMS, an excellent OS that far exceeds what Linux will EVER be able to do, and it has been doing it for YEARS and YEARS and years.
VMS can do things routinely that Linux fanbois could only dream of happing with their 'toy' OS.
RE: Ubuntu Linux bets on the ARM server
IBM has done virtualization since the mid and end -60. Intel had something you could do virtualization on in 1985.
64-bit architecures was mid -70 (Cray computers), 2003 it came to AMD, Intel and with PowerPC.
Look up "Timeline of virtualization development" and "64 bit" in Wikipedia.
So yes, it was a LONG time ago.
Windows has a better solution on ARM