Is microserver an alternative to blade servers?

AMD's 64-bit ARM server will be in volume production in 2014, and the micro-server market is opening up opportunities for growth. Micro-servers are known for their high density and low power consumption, which That's a bit similar to a traditional blade server, and we went on to think about whether microservers could replace blade servers, which microservers do not currently have.

Blade server

Blade servers are commonly used in cluster systems or cluster management solutions designed specifically for special applications and high density computing environments. The blade is installed in a blade server chassis with redundant power supplies. The network in the chassis is provided by a built-in Ethernet switch. This configuration makes the cluster more compact and greatly increases the computational density.

The most significant difference between blade servers and microservers is in computing power. Each blade server can hold two 2GHz Xeon processors, while microservers use low-performance CPUs such as Atom or ARM. Microservices carry more lightweight and parallel computing, while blade servers can carry standardized server workload capacity.

AMD's 64-bit ARM processor is about to enter the market in 2014, and ARM is also stepping into the data center. In 2014, ARM server architecture specifications were released. Participating vendors include Linux developers RedHat, SUSE and Canonical, server makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell, chip maker AMD, AppliedMicro and Texas Instruments, and virtualization provider Citrix. In addition to the above vendors, Microsoft is also involved in the development of ARM server architecture standards.

Micro server

As ARM's ecosystem in the data center market continues to improve, the micro-server market is also ushering in a new driver for growth. The advantages of ARM in handling lightweight workloads are obvious to all. On high-density micro-servers, ARM's lower power consumption can achieve higher deployment density than x86 chips. 2014 is an extremely important year for the development of ARM server. ARM hardware products will appear a lot in this year. If we can open a breakthrough in enterprise application, ARM server will have more market space.

And Intel will not sit idly by ARM in the server market, aggressive, Intel has always been cautious from the ARM company's challenge. The company has developed an Atom-based platform for servers and released last year the C2000 Avoton family of 22-nanometer processes. Intel said the new Silvermont-based microarchitecture has met or surpassed ARM system-on-chip in both performance and performance. In addition, the company will introduce SoC SoCs for next-generation Atom servers later this year in Denverton's 14-nanometer process.

As chip giants focus on the micro-server chip market, the micro-server market is becoming a new segment of the server market. The advantages of traditional blade servers in high density are also being hit by microservers, and the advantages of microservers in power consumption are also evident. The benefits of microservers in reducing enterprise TCO are also evident in the light workloads. Traditional blade servers will be more used in high-performance computing HPC and standard server workloads such as database and data analysis.

So, we see that although both microservers and blade servers are characterized by a high degree of density, the workload scenarios they apply are different, which is the difference in computing power. The emergence of micro-server is more based on power considerations, while the blade server is to increase the computational density. Therefore, the positioning of the two in the server market is different. What is certain is that the micro server will divert the blade server market, but the blade server future application scenario will be more refined. Micro-server and blade server competition will bring new vitality to the high-density server market.