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When the recent Netflix FreeBSD kernel optimization article was posted, all I could think of was why they didn't use a POWER machine for its higher memory throu
by throwawaysml 9y ago
When the recent Netflix FreeBSD kernel optimization article was posted, all I could think of was why they didn't use a POWER machine for its higher memory throughput. Same would be true for SPARC, but that hardware is even less available and I wouldn't trust Oracle with my money or engineering effort.
Then I checked to see FreeBSD's POWER port and it didn't look as readily supported as Linux is, so I assumed that's one reason. Contrary to SPARC, POWER servers can be had from more than the main vendor and it's the only high performance server where you have a chance to get the source code for the microcode and firmware in auxiliary mainboard chips, leaving just the GPU and NIC. This alone I would think would be a reason for safety-conscious users to consider and buy it instead of trying to disable Intel ME.
I still think Netflix ought to evaluate POWER9 (POWER10) and possibly improve the FreeBSD port, and would love more industry support so that little teams like mine stand a chance to get reasonably priced POWER9+ servers.
The completely free aspect is one reason I believe Kollab is using it for their servers.
- vvladymyrov 9y ago>why Netflix didn't use a POWER machine for its higher memory throughput. Probably because there is no POWER9/10 option available from AWS and Netflix is a heavy user of AWS.
- wickberg 9y agoThe Netflix Open Connect appliances are custom-built hardware they send out to ISPs. [1] As evidenced by their heroic efforts to tunes performance[2], and their careful choice of hardware[3], they could certainly deploy POWER if they chose to. [1] https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/ [2] https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/cdb51dda3b99 https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/cdb51dda3b99 [3] https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/ https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/
- achamayou 9y agoSPARCs could (and can still) be had from Fujitsu too. But it’s essentially a dead ISA at this point unfortunately.
- torpcoms 9y agoFor anyone curious about that source code, it is here: https://github.com/open-power https://github.com/open-power