We can talk about storage and networking as much as we want, and about how the gravity of data bends infrastructure to its needs, but the server – or a collection of them loosely or tightly coupled – is still the real center of the datacenter. …
While compute and networking are fairly homogenous across the enterprise datacenter these days, the same cannot be said for storage, which is a bit of a mess and far less uniform than the clustered storage that is deployed by hyperscalers, cloud builders, and HPC centers. …
While parallel programming on distributed systems is difficult, making applications scale across multiple machines – or hybrid compute elements that mix CPUs with FPGAs, GPUs, DSPs, or other motors – linked by a network is not the only problem that coders have to deal with. …
We have been talking about the impending and now delivered 100 Gb/sec speeds for InfiniBand used by HPC centers and for Ethernet to be used by hyperscalers that it is hard to remember sometimes that the enterprise is a significant laggard when it comes to network bandwidth. …
With every new technology that takes off in the IT sector, there is a somewhat predictable curve. …
I recall teaching a college class in operating systems, when well into the class, thinking I was getting the points across, a few of the students stopped the class and asked “Yes, but what really is an operating system?” …
Bringing the Azure platform from Microsoft’s own public cloud down into the datacenters of enterprises and service providers means more than just giving these shops the same tools to manage raw virtualized compute, storage, and networking. …
With its research and development costs for its latest generations of 100 Gb/sec InfiniBand and Ethernet adapters and switches largely behind it and product sales ramping, switch maker Mellanox Technologies is significantly bolstering its top and bottom lines and positioning itself to make acquisitions to broaden and deepen its product lines. …
Offloading parts of the network stack from processors to specialized circuits on network adapter cards is not a new idea. …
In a very real sense, the world’s three biggest public cloud operators are also among the largest server and storage manufacturers. …
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