14 DAY TRIAL // Lately, there have been many debates going on about the role of ARM-based processors in the server world, so researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich have started building the first ever cluster powered by ARM CPUs using AppleTV devices.
The team is comprised of five scientists from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich and a scientist from the Technische Universität München and was started in order to see how an ARM cluster would behave in the real world.
The researchers will focus on both distributed computing performance and power consumption and they plan to release a white paper about their experiences soon.
As far as the hardware is concerned, the proof of concept cluster was built using six second-generation Apple TV devices.
These are powered by the same hardware found inside the iPad and feature a 1GHz clocked Apple A4 SoC based on the ARM Cortex-A8 architecture paired together with a PowerVR graphics core, as well as 256MB of RAM memory.
Thanks to their small size, as the Apple TV units measure just 3.9x3.9x0.9 inches, the cluster occupies a reduced footprint and its power consumption should come under the 36W mark as each box uses only 6W.
In addition, the hardware is relatively inexpensive as an Apple TV unit is available for 100 USD or 120 EUR in the retail market.
Right now, the scientists are evaluating the performance aspects of the platform as well as the limiting factors encountered along the way, as the cluster is up and running MPI applications as well as various benchmarks.
The experiment should provide us with additional insight regarding ARM's role in future HPC cluster designs.
This is particularly important since energy efficiency will become the single most important constraining factor for the next-generation of exascale supercomputers, and ARM-based chips could provide an answer to these problems. (via AppleTV Cluster)