With cloud computing, big data, and software defined datacenter markets pumping on all cylinders, performance and energy savings continue to be the hottest topic areas among industry leaders. Today, Intel announced new versions of their datacenter chips that are seven times faster then previous of Atom.
Hyperscale computing is slowly but surely taking over the enterprise. The big data and cloud explosion is forcing organizations to beef up their storage environments, but extending legacy infrastructure is not the way to successfully achieve hyperscale status.
Intel is battling ARM both in the datacenter and mobile market. The new Atom chips are a big hope for Intel to have the same level of performance as their main line of Core processors. The new chips called Silvermont are designed to be both high performance and low in energy consumption.
Intel’s new portfolio of chips includes the second generation 64-bit Intel® Atom™ C2000 product family of system-on-chip (SoC) designs formicroservers and cold storage platforms (code named “Avoton”) and for entry networking platforms (code named “Rangeley”). These new SoCs are the company’s first products based on the Silvermont micro-architecture, the new design in its leading 22nm Tri-Gate SoC process delivering significant increases in performance and energy efficiency, and arrives only nine months after the previous generation.
“As the world becomes more and more mobile, the pressure to support billions of devices and users is changing the very composition of datacenters,” said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Connected Systems Group at Intel.
“From leadership in silicon and SoC design to rack architecture and software enabling, Intel is providing the key innovations that original equipment manufacturers, telecommunications equipment makers and cloud service providers require to build the datacenters of the future.”
Intel is betting big on hyperscale in the datacenter. Low latency and hyperscale computing are reshaping the fundamental design of databases and system says industry analyst and cohost of @theCUBE David Vellante. As a result this is radically changing the information technology industry.
Diane Bryant’s presentation speaks directly what we covered @theCUBE last week at #vmworld – Software-defined Data Center (SDDC) is here and now. Intel calls it Software-defined Infrastructure (Wikibon.org calls is Software-led Infrastructure – research here). Bryant’s presentation nails it as did VMware that is orchestration is the key and the applications are in the drivers seat – Intel says that the Software-defined Infrastructure is about application-driven allocation of resources for greater efficiency.
Behind these principles is the consumerization of enterprise IT. The fundamental drive for flash is from mobile consumer products, and enterprise computing in support of consumers or enterprises rides on the coattails. Enterprise IT vendor innovation is and will continue to be primarily focused on and around hyperscale technologies built from largely consumer components. The greatest increase in enterprise vendor market value is likely to accrue to developers of new total enterprise application portfolios adapted to fit a business, rather than demand business change to fit the application.
The Business Impact Of Hyperscale In The Datacenter
The impact of the huge difference in speed between processors and current storage leads to the design principles behind today’s enterprise systems. Designers always keep the number of database calls low in transactional system of record. If this exceeds 100 database calls per transaction, there are significant implications in the cost of operations and the cost of application maintenance for such systems. Performance can go to hell in a hand-basket. As a result, the ease-of-use of many applications is less than perfect with significant training costs.
Web Hyperscale Been There Done That – Now Coming To Enterprise
The largest internet service providers such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Zynga use hyperscale systems in very large data centers. These systems are defined to fit a relatively small number of systems or system components. Most use ODMs to build these systems to their specification. The internet providers tend to spend on people to save on equipment and software, and to tailor open-source software and commodity hardware and software to the needs of the applications. The core of their business is the quality and value of their applications.
In contrast, enterprise data centers support many applications, and tend to spend on equipment and software to save on people costs. That spending includes outsourcing facilities and operations to large data centers, and increasingly outsourcing to cloud service providers. These cloud providers are using much lower costs, using open-source software where possible, and are spreading the costs over many customers by running a multi-tennant environment across multiple locations.
Two interviews from last week from two very influential enterprise industry #techathletes Pat Gelsinger CEO of VMware and Stephen DeWitt
Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware on @theCUBE at #vmworld
Stephen DeWitt, SVP & GM Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, on @theCUBE at #vmworld