opteron a1100 arm

[Jim Thompson]

On Feb 4, 2014, at 3:29 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:

> In message <493DEB39-C4B4-409E-B8B2-B1B11E013754 at netgate.com>, Jim Thompson wri
> tes:
> 
>>> No but it may well be an early reminder of the upcoming generation of
>>> powerful ARM servers that we don't want to leave unsupported.
>> 
>> isn't that attractive when the 8-core, 64-bit Intel C20
>> 00 parts are here, now, at a lower TDP
>> (20W, .vs 25W for the a1100.  22nm rocks). 
> 
> I very much welcome a competing 64bit CPU into the marketplace and
> will buy one myself, as soon as I can, for no other reason than to
> help break the X86 monopoly on server architecture.
> 
> Monopolies are never a good thing.

True, but I didn’t say that the chip wasn’t interesting.   What I said is that it’s not that attractive (to the real market for these: micro servers).

The dual 10Gig Ethernet and 8 SATA 3.0 ports are interesting.   You won’t get that with a C2K system at 25W TDP, (4 x GigE that can run at 2.5Gbps per port, and 2 SATA 3.0 ports currently) but Intel owns IP for both, so if that becomes a differentiator for design wins, I’d expect a future variant to cover.

But by all means, port FreeBSD to it.  Perhaps it can be the long-desired “reference platform” to bring ARM into a “Tier 1” architecture status.

Jim