Submitted by Azul unwrapped its newest chip the 48-core Vega2 today. It is the successor to last year’s Vega1. This Java processor triples performance from the year-old part and has an attractive feature set. Let’s start out with the systems. Azul does not sell chips, only complete machines. There is a two-chip, 96 core, 48GB model 3210 and a four-chip, 96-192GB model 3220. Both are 5U machines, with the 3210 pulling about 580W max and the 3220 pulling about 1000W. There will be eight and 16 socket machines coming in 2007.
What would one use a system like this for?
Enterprise Java applications. Any Java application requiring high amounts of concurrent processing (highly-threaded.) Etc.
Any non trivial high load server application. Banks, ebay type web sites, Hospitals, Governmental institutions, Army, Data centers, Airports etc. One drawback is (i think), this is only for hosting the application. for other stuff (like storage, non-java applications) you probably need separate systems.
I guess some would see that as a drawback. On the other hand I think a lot of people prefer appliance computing to only focus one strength and be able to be dropped into your network as an isolated component.
My only comment on that would be how much integration work does it take to get one of these things up and going. Does anyone have an experience with one of these?
Also wasn’t there a lawsuit between Sun and these guys? I don’t remember hearing that it was resolved.
i think lawsuit is still unresolved. bad thing is, this systems are too high level it is hard to find “real” reviews. But i think it is fairly ok to assume it is not so hard to integrate those systems since they claim to work with almost all App servers and having a partnership with BEA.
Who wants to buy me one for Christmas!
My favorite part of the article is this:
“The ISA for the Vega2 cores does not directly map to Java, but they map pretty well to the concepts in VM based languages.”
Anyone for a Mono port? How about LLVM, Parrot, Neko, …
nobody uses mono in servers.
People use .NET on servers, but I don’t have the source to that VM. Porting Mono is a good workaround for that.
Anyone see a price on these systems?
Yes, I’m actually serious.
Thanks.
From the article:
“…The Azul box starts at $49,995 for a 2-way and probably around $500K for the 16-way, so it is notably cheaper than the Fujitsu machine.”