[HN Gopher] New x86 8U servers with 32TB RAM, 480 physical cores...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       New x86 8U servers with 32TB RAM, 480 physical cores, 15 PCIe x16
       slots, 400GbE
        
       Author : MichaelZuo
       Score  : 16 points
       Date   : 2023-08-15 21:42 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (lenovopress.lenovo.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (lenovopress.lenovo.com)
        
       | endisneigh wrote:
       | With 32TB of ram it looks appealing to not even bother with a
       | RDBMS and just use a full text database and keep everything in
       | memory lol.
        
         | at_a_remove wrote:
         | You laugh but I have done some crazy speedups via ramdisk
         | techniques.
        
           | doublerabbit wrote:
           | Early Minecraft for one.
        
         | MichaelZuo wrote:
         | It's not Big Data until it's over 32TB now! (or 64TB if your a
         | Power10 user)
        
         | tomsmeding wrote:
         | If your data is mutable, as in most situations where one uses a
         | database, you still have to hit the disk for writes and wait
         | for a disk sync before continuing after the writes.
         | 
         | Reads are indeed fast, but a proper RDBMS will instantly use
         | all of that memory capacity for caching anyway, meaning that
         | you get the same read speeds even with the RDBMS. No need to
         | change your code.
        
       | alberth wrote:
       | Is there a reason why AMD hasn't gone past dual-proc setup to
       | allow for this type of extreme scaling?
       | 
       | I assume it's simply due to market size being so small for a
       | server so large?
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | Also Infinity Fabric may have poor performance beyond two
         | sockets.
        
       | tedunangst wrote:
       | I love the symbols on the cross connects to turn the two 4U into
       | an 8U.
        
       | MichaelZuo wrote:
       | There are also similar products being introduced by HPE, Dell,
       | Supermicro, etc...
       | 
       | Posted here since it's pretty surprising how far commodity x86
       | servers have come.
       | 
       | For example, there are very few scenarios I can think of where
       | even large startups would need more then 32TB of DDR5-4800 RAM or
       | more then a few 400G Ethernet links on a single system.
        
         | jeffbee wrote:
         | As the marketing states, this isn't targeted to startups of any
         | size, or any other organization capable of writing software. It
         | has exactly one application: SAP HANA. SAP is a large and
         | valuable company with many users of their terrible program,
         | reputed to be among the worst programs ever perpetrated, which
         | is nevertheless quite widespread.
        
           | MichaelZuo wrote:
           | It's very likely there will be some customers not running
           | HANA shops.
           | 
           | But anyways, whomever buys them, it probably has a small
           | overlap with the average HN reader. So it's meant as an
           | illustrative example in a familiar context.
           | 
           | EDIT: Then again it's possible someone might buy it for
           | personal use, e.g. if someone has multiple terabytes of
           | spreadsheets that they need to work on simultaneously.
        
             | doublerabbit wrote:
             | I'd buy one just for bragging rights. Why not have 32TB?
             | 
             | I can think of many ways, use it as a ramdisk NAS,
             | minecraft game servers..
        
       | carlsborg wrote:
       | 32TB ought to be enough for anybody.
        
       | wmf wrote:
       | It's 480 cores. Typo?
        
         | MichaelZuo wrote:
         | Yup, just edited, thanks.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-08-15 23:01 UTC)